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BS  511  .F37  1876 
Faunce,  D.  W.  1829-1911 
A  young  man's  difficulties 
with  his  Bible 


A  YOUNG  MAN'S 


DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 


ET 

EEV.     D.    W.     PAUNCE, 

Author  of  Fletcher  Prize  Essay,   "  The  Christian  in  the  World." 


NEW    YORK: 

Sheldon  &  Company. 

NO.  8  MURRAY  STREET. 
187G. 


YALUABLE    RELIGIOUS    BOOKS. 


A  YOUNG  MAN'S  DIFFICXTLTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE- 

By  Rev.  D.  W.  Faunce. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  PREACHING.    By 

Jolm  A.  Broadus,  DD.,  LL.D. 

WHY  FOUR  GOSPELS  OR  THE  GOSPELS  FOR  ALL 
THE  WORLD.     By  Rev.  D.  S.  Gregory. 

DOCTRINE  OF  PRAYER.  Its  Utility  and  its  relation  to 
Providence,  by  P.  H.  Mell,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

LECTURES  TO  MY  STUDENTS.  Addresses  delivered  to 
the  Students  of  the  Pastor's  College,  London,  by  Rev.  C.  H. 
Spurgeon. 

COMMENTING  AND  COMMENTARIES.  By  Rev.  c.  H. 
Spurgeon. 


COPTRIOHT, 

SHELDON    &    COMPANY. 
1876. 


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f3  «        *<>. 


iro'-|> 


PREFACE. 


The  author,  on  assuming  the  pastoral  charge  of  a 
church  in  a  thrifty  and  intelligent  inland  city  of  New 
England,  found  in  the  community  a  large  number  of 
young  men  not  exactly  sceptical  but  a  good  deal  unset- 
tled in  their  views  of  religion.  They  were  graduates  of 
Grammar  and  High  schools  ;  intelligent  young  men  wlio, 
though  employed  as  clerks  or  apprentices,  found  time 
to  read  the  papers,  the  magazines,  and  occasionally  a 
book.  They  had  caught  the  drift  of  one  section  of  popu- 
lar thought.  They  asked  for  some  book  which  should 
meet  briefly  and  yet  fairly  the  difficulties  which  tliey 
felt.  There  were  plenty  of  scholarly  volumes,  suited  to 
men  who  had  received  a  liberal  education  and  who  were 
masters  of  their  own  time.  But  a  small,  popular  and  at 
the  same  time  accurate  volume,  suited  to  this  demand, 
the  author  could  not  find.  It  occurred  to  him  to 
invite  these  young  men  to  state  to  him  frankly  their 
perplexities,  and  then  to  give  a  course  of  lectures  on  the 
general  subject  of  these  ''  Difficulties."  The  lectures  were 
given  to  crowded  houses  on  Sunday  evenings,  one  in  each 
montii,  for  two  successive  seasons.     It  has  been  thought 


6  PKEFACE. 

that  good  might  be  done  by  publishing  selections  from 
these  lectures.  A  few  of  them  have  been  taken,  and 
the  style  somewhat  changed  from  the  spoken  to  the 
written  form.  The  aim  has  been  to  give  the  results  of 
careful  study  without  the  processes,  to  be  as  accurate  in 
the  statement  of  facts  as  if  the  work  Avere  to  be  used  as 
a  text-book,  and  yet  to  keep  in  mind  tlie  class  of  young 
men  for  whom  it  is  designed.  Every  chapter,  without 
an  exception,  has  grown  out  of  an  actual  conversation 
held  with  some  young  friend  or  else  out  of  some  letter 
or  message  received  from  him.  When  delivered  as  lec- 
tures the  author  received  repeated  thanks  from  individ- 
uals to  whom  they  were  helpful.  Given  originally  to 
his  former  charge  at  Concord,  N.  H.,  a  portion  of  the 
lectures  have  been  repeated  to  the  congregation  which  he 
now  serves  in  Lynn,  Mass.  It  is  his  prayer  that  God 
may  make  this  little  volume  a  blessing  to  those  who 
read  it. 

D.  W.  F. 
Lynn,  Mass. 


OOI^TEJ^TS. 


CHAPTER   I, 

PAQS 
THE  YOtTNG  MA-N'S  BOOK 9 


CHAPTER    n. 

IS  THE   BIBLE   TRUE  ? 37 

CHAPTER   HI. 

IS  THE  BIBLE  INSPIRED  ?.  .  .    66 

CHAPTER   IV. 

DIFFICULTIES  AS    TO    MIRACLES  -AND   TEACHINGS 95 

CHAPTER   V. 

DIFFICULTIES  AS  TO   GEOLOGY. 123 

CHAPTER   VI. 

DIFFICFLTIES    FROM  ASTRONOMY 149 

CHAPTER   VII. 
DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT  HISTORIC    FACTS 163 


A    YOUNG    MAK'S 

DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS   BIBLE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

The   Young  Man's   Book. 

It  is  told  of  a  certain  publisher  that  he  was  in  despair 
because  a  rival  firm  had  issued  so  many  excellent  and 
successful  books  of  advice  to  the  young.  He  confided 
his  perplexity  to  a  friend.  That  friend  advised  him  to 
select  the  finest  paper  and  the  clearest  type,  and  tlien  to 
reprint  that  book  of  the  Bible  known  as  "  The  Proverbs 
of  Solomon "  under  the  new  and  startling  title  of 
"  Counsels  for  Young  Men  by  a  King."  Whether  the 
advice  was  followed,  and  whether  if  followed  the  venture 
was  successful  as  a  business  speculation,  is  not  known. 
But  this  IS  certain  ;  that  if  some  would  be  disappointed 
at  their  first  opening  of  such  a  volume,  on  further 
reading  they  would  be  compelled  to  admit  that  the  old 
book  was 'new,  and  that  the  new  book  was  the  freshest 
and  richest  of  all  the  many  volumes  addressed  to  young 
men. 

Solomon  had  the  advantage  of  knowing  thoroughly 


10      A  TOUNG   man's   difficulties  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

of  the  things  about  which  he  wrote.  The  son  of  a  king, 
inheriting  wealth,  with  princely  tastes,  with  a  love  for 
learning,  and  a  natural  shrewdness  in  dealing  with  men, 
with  manners  courtly,  elegant  in  person,  a  close  observer 
of  all  the  things  and  all  the  men  about  him,  he  gathered 
up  the  wise  sayings  of  the  ages,  and  passing  them 
through  the  mint  of  his  own  mind,  he  issued  them, 
newly  coined,  for  the  moral  and  social  and  spiritual  cur- 
rency of  all  the  world.  The  Psalms  of  David  his  father 
were  for  closet  use  and  for  temple  service  on  the  Sabbath. 
The  Proverbs  of  Solomon,  the  son,  were  for  out  of  door 
life  on  all  the  week  days  of  the  year.  David  helps  us 
sing  and  pray,  but  Solomon  tells  us  how  to  live  wisely 
Avhen  the  prayer  and  the  worship  are  ended.  His  pro- 
verbs are  the  condensed  and  portable  wisdom  of  the  ages. 
The  versatility  of  the  author  is  amazing.  He- seems  to 
have  listened  to  the  prattling  of  childhood,  and  to  the 
whispered  accents  of  youthful  lovers  to  have  put  him- 
self into  sympathy  with  the  trader  in  his  store  and 
the  wife  in  her  home,  with  the  priest  at  the  temple  altar, 
and  the  beggar  at  the  temple  gate,  to  have  heard  the 
grumble  of  the  disappointed  man  and  the  chuckle  of  the 
man  who  has  just  seized  on  worldly  success,  to  have 
heard  all  the  haughty  tones  of  the  prince  and  the  lowly 
words  of  the  peasant,  to  have  stood  by  manhood  in  its 
developed  strength,  and  by  age  tottering  under  the  load 
of  buried  hopes  towards  a  willing  grave ;  and  to  each 
one  of  all  these  classes  he  interprets,  better  than  the 


THE  YOUKG   MAN's  BOOK.  11 

man  himself  could  do  it,  the  peculiarity  of  his  wants, 
and  the  needs  of  his  life,  and  then  he  offers  by  way  of 
practical  commentary,  some  quick  pithy  sentence  of 
sanctified  wisdom.  He  fused  the  older  proverbs  of  the 
world,  extracted  the  dross  and  retained  the  gold.  He 
took  up  the  selfish  shrewdness  of  mere  worldly  wisdom' 
and  where  the  proverb  was  Avrong  he  made  it  right,  and 
where  it  needed  the  salt  of  religion  he  always  added  it, 
as  a  power  to  purify  and  save.  One  idea,  that  of  god- 
liness, runs  through  the  book.  "Wisdom  is  godliness  ; 
and  by  godliness  he  means  ''the  love  of  God,"  and  "  the 
fear  of  God,"  the  sense  of  the  "  eyes  of  the  Lord  as  in 
every  place,"  and  of  God  as  one  who  "  will  bring  every 
work  into  judgment  whether  it  be  good  or  whether  it  be 
evil"  This  intense  godliness  is  the  golden  thread  on 
which  all  these  pearls  of  proverb  are  carefully  strung. 

Nor  was  his  Encyclopedia,  for  the  book  is  really  such 
in  its  character,  the  result  alone  of  observation  and  learn- 
ing. The  author  had  known  the  experience  of  life. 
Written  near  the  close  of  a  singularly  varied  and  exten- 
sive career,  in  which  he  touched  heights  and  depths  sel- 
dom visited  by  one  and  the  same  human  soul,  with 
memories  of  the  widest  possible  contrasts  of  physical 
mental  and  moral  position,  an  outcast  at  one  time,  a 
king  at  another,  here  heading  a  rebellion,  and  there  the 
most  loyal  of  men,  at  one  time  fascinated  by  philosoph- 
ical speculations,  next  tossed  to  and  fro  by  the  dreariest 
scepticism  as  to  God  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 


12      A  YOUNG   man's  difficulties  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

and  again  bedraggled  in  the  mire  of  heathenism 
through  the  persuasions  of  his  idolatrous  friend,  Hiram, 
king  of  Tyre,  and  then  leaving  his  thin  philosophy, 
coming  out  of  his  scepticism,  and  up  from  the  slough  of 
the  lowest  idolatry,  we  see  him  emerge  upon  the 
high  ground  of  religion,  humbled  by  his  fall,  penitent 
for  his  guilt,  and  resting,  at  length,  as  the  result  of  the 
broadest  experience  of  life,  the  climax  of  all  his  wisdom 
and  knowledge,  in  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter, 
that  to  fear  God  and  keep  his  commandments  is  the 
whole  duty  of  man. 

His  fall  was  indeed  a  sad  one.  For  only  one  who 
stands  so  high  can  fall  so  low.  Another  has  said  of  him 
that  ''He  sinned  with  a  high  hand  on  a  large  scale  and 
with  a  certain  royal  gusto.  He  drank  of  the  cup  of 
corruption  deep  and  large  ;  emptying  it  to  the  very 
dregs.  His  fall  is  instructive.  The  pinnacle  overhangs 
the  precipice.  And  any  great  proj^ortion  between  gifts 
and  graces  renders  the  former  fatal  as  is  a  knife  in  the 
hands  of  a  suicide,  or  handwriting  to  a  forger.  His 
misery  became  something  wonderful.  And  thus  on  all 
sides,  bright  or  black,  he  was  equally  and  soundly  great. 
Like  a  pyramid,  the  shadow  he  cast  in  one  direction  was 
as  great  as  the  light  he  received  in  the  other."  In  the 
Ecclesiastes  we  have  his  spiritual  biography.  "We  go 
with  him  through  the  changes  of  his  infidelity,  of  his 
sensualism,  of  his  ambition,  of  his  disappointment  in 
them  all,  and  we  see  him  in  his  return  to  God.     And 


THE  TOUKG   MAN'S   BOOK.  13 

then,  revising  all  his  former  work,  recasting  his  maxims 
in  the  crucible  of  his  own  experience,  and  setting,  in  the 
purified  wisdom  of  his  later  days,  the  seal  of  a  divine 
inspiration  upon  them,  he  writes  in  his  matarest  years 
this  book  of  "  The  Proverbs  "  which  is  addressed  to  the 
thoughtful  and  earnest  men  of  the  world. 

Such  is  the  book  which  commends  itself  to  the  study 
of  young  men.  On  further,  we  are  to  take  up  the  mat- 
ter of  a  young  man's  difficulties  with  his  Bible.  Objec- 
tions are  to  be  considered.  The  gravest  questions  about 
the  volume  which  is  popularly  called  by  those  who  know 
it  best  and  love  it  most  "  the  Word  of  God,"  are  pre- 
sently to  be  discussed  with  what  of  fairness  and  candor 
we  can  bring  to  the  consideration  of  them.  But  as  every 
building  must  be  in  some  way  approached,  as  the  archi- 
tect plans  always  a  portico  to  his  edifice,  so  we  will 
enter  upon  our  work,  through  this  royal  gateway  of 
ancient  wisdom,  by  our  study  of  Solomon — the  wise  man 
of  the  olden  time. 

Let  us  be  sure  that  we  get  clearly  before  our  minds  the 
object  of  the  author  in  this  book,  of  ''  The  Proverbs." 
There  is  indeed  one  general  design  running  through  all 
these  books  of  the  Bible.  And  yet  under  this  general 
purpose,  there  are  as  many  subdivisions  as  there  are 
books.  No  two  cover  the  same  ground.  For  we  have 
here  a  history,  and  there  a  biography,  in  one  book  a 
direction  as  to  what  to  believe,  in  another  as  to  what  to 
practice,  now  a  collection   of  devotional  psalms,  and 


14:      A  Y0U2^G   man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

then  an  epistle  to  a  cliurcb,  or  a  letter  to  a  prominent 
man.  But  in  each  of  these  books  there  is  a  specific 
design  to  be  accomplished. 

What,  then,  is  the  aim  of  the  author  in  the  Proverbs  ? 
A  very  brief  examination  of  the  book  will  convince  us 
that  its  specific  purpose  is  to  show  men  their  duty  in 
practical  life.  It  ferrets  out  men.  It  shows  the  eye  of 
God's  omniscience  to  be  upon  all  the  minutest  thoughts 
and  feelings  and  acts  of  our  mortal  existence.  If  other 
books  concern  themselves  with  the  questions  of  our  im- 
mortal life,  this  has  to  do  chiefly  with  our  present  con- 
duct as  citizens  of  God's  world.  If  any  man  says  the 
Bible  talks  as  if  we  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  die,  talks 
as  if  "  our  life  were  all  to  be  passed  in  a  monastery  or  a 
church,"  we  say  to  him,  here,  at  least,  is  a  book  which 
follows  you  to  your  business,  goes  into  the  shop,  comes 
behind  your  counter,  sees  the  weights  as  true  or  false, 
looks  over  your  shoulder  at  the  ledger,  goes  back  to 
your  family,  has  a  home  thrust  at  every  part  of  your 
daily  life.  There  are  no  metaphysics  here  ;  for  all  is 
intensely  practical. 

If  a  young  man  with  earnest  heart  comes  to  ask  how 
he  can  gain  the  earlier  inward  experiences  of  religion, 
we  would  not  point  him  to  this  book  ;  unless  we  knew 
that  some  outward  wrong  had  kept  him  from  right  feel- 
ing. It  is  true  that  we  find  the  elements  of  every 
truth  in  this  book  of  Proverbs.  But  who  would  go  into  a 
well  that  he  might  read  by  the  starlight  that  penetrates 


THE  YOUNG   MAN's  BOOK.  15 

to  its  depths,  when  he  can  have  the  full  sunlight  with- 
out that  trouble  ?  To  the  gospels,  to"  that  especially 
of  John,  would  we  send  him  ;  to  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  he  should  go  and  see  how  inspired  men  answer 
the  great  question  of  the  ages,  "  What  must  I  do  to  be 
saved  ? " 

But  if  a  man  is  already  a  Christian  and  would  know 
how  on  that  foundation  to  build  a  noble  structure  ;  if 
he  would  do  the  best  with  himself,  and  make  the  utmost 
out  of  life,  we  would  point  him  to  the  Book  of  Proverbs, 

So,  too,  if  there  be  any  young  man  who  has  supposed 
that  the  ordinary  social  virtues  are  all  the  religion  a  man 
needs,  and  if  he  has  an  impression  tliat  the  Book  of 
Proverbs  favors  this  idea,  let  him  come  and  study  these 
pages.  He  will  find  that  no  book  is  so  at  war  with  the 
idea  of  the  merely  ornamental  virtues  when  not  attached 
to  a  holy  heart.  God  is  in  this  Book  of  Proverbs.  It 
insists  in  its  opening  chapters  that  sooner  or  later,  in 
time  or  eternity,  utter  ruin  will  overtake  the  character 
that  is  not  built  upon  *'the  fear  and  the  love  of  God.'* 
AVisdom,  moral  wisdom,  that  which  takes  God's  claims 
into  account — is  the  basis  of  the  morality  it  enjoins. 
This,  the  foundation  stone,  once  laid,  the  book  shows  how 
every  stone  is  to  be  hewn  and  every  course  to  be  jjlaced 
as  we  build  the  edifice.  And  so  all  private  life,  and 
public  life,  all  social,  domestic,  and  political  relations, 
all  moralities  and  courtesies  and  charities  are  here  sepa- 
rated and  then  combined  and  illustrated,  their  shape  and 


16     A  YOUNG   man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

color  all  given,  and  the  whole  commencled  and  com- 
manded to  the  young  men  of  all  ages  and  climes.  Or, 
it  may  be,  that  one  has  imbibed  notions  which  he  thinks 
more  especially  broad  and  free.  He  cares  less  for  the 
right  ordering  of  outward  life,  thinking  it  more  a  matter 
of  custom,  convenience  or  education.  He  has  become 
interested  in  the  speculations  of  the  hour  as  to  the  origin 
of  all  these  things  about  us,  and  as  to  the  laws  of  this 
wondrous  nature  that  is  engaging  the  attention  and  awak- 
ening the  keen  interest  of  the  thoughtful  and  intelli- 
gent young  men  of  the  day.  He  is  becoming  less  stout 
in  his  assertion  of  what  man  can  do,  and  more  aware  of 
the  mighty  forces  of  the  world.  He  is  smitten  by  the 
majesty  of  law.  He  comes  to  think  of  this  force,  com- 
pared with  which  man's  power  is  so  feeble,  as  imper- 
sonal. Solomon  became  at  one  period  absorbed  in  the 
thought  of  the  objects  of  the  natural  world,  as  a  modern 
young  man  is  in  danger  of  becoming  absorbed  in  the 
thought  of  its  laws.  '  As  the  one  found  himself  drawn 
to  be  an  idolater,  so  the  other  is  drawn  towards  fatalism 
in  the  presence  of  the  vast  powers  of  the  universe.  But 
there  comes  a  time  when  a  man  sees  the  tendency  of 
things.  He  has  to  own  an  impersonal  nature,  or  else  a 
personal  Creator  and  Sovereign.  Fatalism  says  It,  exactly 
as  religion  says  God. 

Each  of  these  excludes  the  other.  If  there  be  a  God 
who  rules  his  universe,  there  is  no  room  for  the  fatal- 
istic it.     If  there  be,  in  the  smallest  event,  anything 


THE   TOUNG    MAN'S   BOOK.  17 

outside  the  divine  control,  then  there  is  no  more  an  in- 
finite God.  Fatalism,  a  century  ago,  loved  to  talk  of  all 
things  as  coming  by  chance,  as  if  everything  were  too 
loose  for  a  God.  To-day  it  would  insist  that  everything 
is  so  fixed,  so  bound  by  law,  that  there  is  no  place  nor  need 
for  God  in  the  working  of  events.  They  work  them- 
selves out  in  definite  ways.  Buckle,  with  scholarly 
phrase,  will  have  it  tliat  even  moral  actions  are  as  fixed 
as  physical  events.  And,  in  social  life,  a  frivolous  fatal- 
ism is  constantly  heard,  saying,  '<  It  is  all  fixed,  all 
fated.  It  happens  so.  It  can't  be  helped.  It  is  a  thing 
of  destiny.     What  is  to  be  will  be." 

Now  how  is  this  fatalism  to  be  met  ?  By  asserting 
the  truth  of  man's  free  will  ?  But  that  is  simply  meet- 
ing the  vastly  lengthened  line  of  fatalism  at  one  point. 
It  is  opposing  an  avalanche,  by  the  brandishing  of  a  pin. 
Within  certain  limits  man  is  free.  Bat  his  circle  is  as 
that  of  a  peck-measure  to  the  orbit  of  the  most  distant 
planet.  A  thousand  things  touch  every  man,  over  which 
he  has  no  control.  His  birth,  in  its  time,  place,  manner, 
circumstances,  and,  usually,  his  death  also,  are  not 
matters  of  his  own  will.  First  and  last  and  midst  and 
always  through  his  life,  he  encounters  powers  and  events 
that  are  beyond  his  control.  There  is  then  no  sufficient 
answer  to  fatalism  in  the  undoubted  truth  of  man's  free 
will.  There  is  one  and  only  one  answer  broad  enough 
to  meet  all  the  facts.  It  is  the  answer  of  religion. 
Religion  insists  upon  a  God,   all-wise,   all-just,  who, 


18      A   YOUNG   man's   difficulties   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

through  fixed  law,  and,  if  need  be,  over  fixed  law  ;  who, 
through  man'rf  freedom,  and  if  need  be,  over  that  free- 
dom, can  and  does  control  all  things  according  to  the 
counsel  and  purpose  of  his  own  eternal  intelligence  and 
will.  Strangely  enough,  some  men  always  confound 
these  two  things — fatalism  and.  the  divine  election. 
But  they  are  as  far  apart  as  the  poles.  They  exclude-' 
each  other.  Both  cannot  be  true.  One  of  them  must 
be.  And  the  only  reply  to  the  fatalistic  it,  is  that  fur- 
nished by  the  being  and  rule  of  a  personal  God. 

Fatalism  may  be  compared  to  a  vast  revolving  iron 
wheel.  It  goes  round  remorselessly,  pitilessly,  crushing 
all  before  it.  It  can  have  neither  intelligence  nor  pur- 
pose, neither  justice  nor  compassion.  It  shrieks  with 
every  revolution,  "  It  can't  be  helped.  It  must  be  en- 
dured. It  is  all  fixed  and  fated.  There  is  no  purpose, 
no  reason,  no  result.  It  is  the  only  God. "  Before  these 
awful  revolutions  of  this  terrible  and  monstrous  lawless 
law — for  law  without  a  God  is  really  lawless — all  the 
light  and  love  and  joy  of  the  divine  Paternity  are  crushed 
out,  and  man  seems  to  be  the  mere  mote  imprisoned  in 
the  mountain.  Oh,  how  widely  different  in  all  its  power 
on  human  life,  is  that  great  solar  fact  that  "  the  Lord 
God  Omnipotent  reigneth  ! " 

There  is  an  ante-war  incident  that  shows  the  power 
for  despair  of  the  one,  and  for  hope  of  the  other  view. 
A  dark  cloud  hung  over  the  interests  of  the  African  race 
in   our  land.     There  seemed  no  way  of  deliverance. 


THE   YOUNG    man's   BOOK.  19 

Frederick  Douglass,  at  a  crowded  meeting,  depicted  the 
terrible  coudition.  Everything  was  against  his  people. 
One  political  party  had  gone  down  on  its  knees  to 
slavery.  The  other  proposed  not  to  abolish  it  anywhere 
but  only  to  restrict  it.  The  Supreme  Court  had  given 
judgment  against  black  men  as  such.  He  drew  a  pic- 
ture of  his  race  writhing  under  the  lash  of  the  overseer 
and  trampled  upon  by  brutal  and  lascivious  men.  As 
he  went  on  with  his  despairing  words,  a  great  horror  of 
darkness  seemed  to  settle  down  upon  the  audience. 
The  orator  even  uttered  the  ci-y  for  blood.  There  was 
no  other  relief.  And  then  he  showed  that  there  was 
no  relief  even  in  that.  Every  thing,  every  influence, 
every  event  was  gathering  not  for  good  but  for  evil 
about  the  doomed  race.  It  seemed,  as  if  they  were  fated 
to  destruction.  Just  at  the  instant  when  the  cloud  was 
most  heavy  over  the  audience,  there  slowly  rose,  in  the 
front  seat,  an  old  black  woman.  Her  name,  "  So- 
journer Truth."  She  had  given  it  to  herself.  Far  and 
wide,  she  was  known  as  an  African  prophetess.  Every 
eye  was  on  her.  The  orator  paused.  Eeaching  out 
towards  him  her  long  bony  finger,  as  every  eye  followed 
her  pointing,  she  cried  out,  "Frederick,  is  God  dead?" 
It  was  a  lightning- flash  upon  that  darkness.  The  cloud 
began  to  break,  and  faith  and  hoi^e  and  patience  re- 
turned with  the  idea  of  a  personal  and  ever-living  God. 
Such  is  always  the  result,  whether  we  look  out  on  the 
broad  scenes  of  human  history,  or  in  upon  the  lowering 


20    A  TOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  nis  bible. 

events  of  any  one  human  life.  Everywhere  it  is  the 
word  of  despair,  and  God  is  the  word  of  faith  and 
hope. 

And  as  the  divine  phm  of  things  is  the  true  view  of 
them,  so  there  must  be,  unto  the  complete  answer  of  all 
fatalism,  an  emphasis  put  upon  the  eUrnity  of  this 
divine  plan  of  things.  For  are  not  all  our  thinkers 
pushing  their  inquiries  backward  ?  Are  they  not  asking 
whence  and  when  this  established  order  of  things  ? 
They  go  back  before  man  to  find  his  origin  in  some  vast 
process  of  development.  They  push  back  their  fatalis- 
tic it  until  they  come  virtually  to  make  an  eternal  it. 
And  the  only  answer  possible  is  that  furnished  by  the 
Scripture  doctrine  of  an  eternal  God  who  from  "  before 
the  foundation  of  the  world  hath  chosen "  the  things 
that  shall  be.  It  is  Solomon's  doctrine  that  the  recog- 
nition of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  all  wisdom,  and 
the  sum  of  all  knowledge.  And  Christian  thinkers  arc 
being  driven  anew  to  assort  this  doctrine  by  the  fatalistic 
tendency  of  certain  lines  of  modern  thought.  As  noth- 
ing less  than  the  thought  of  an  eternal  and  personal  God 
meets  the  demands  of  the  intellect,  so  nothing  less  than 
this  meets  the  yearnings  of  the  heart.  How  justly  and 
beautifully  has  Faber  said  : 

"  0  Majesty,  unspeakable  and  dread  I 
Wert  thou  less  mighty  than  thou  art. 

Thou  wert,  O  Lord,  too  great  for  our  belief. 
Too  little  for  our  heart. 


TnE  YorxG  man's  book:  21 

But  greatness  wliicli  is  infinite,  makes  room 

For  all  tilings  in  its  lap  to  lie ; 
We  should  be  cruslied  by  a  magnificence 

Short  of  infinity. 

Great  God  !  our  lowliness  takes  heart  to  play 

Beneath  the  shadow  of  thy  state  ; 
The  only  comfort  of  our  littleness 

Is  that  thou  art  so  great." 

And  when  an  inquiring  young  man  is  driven  back  to 
recognition  of  God,  as  a  logical  necessity  of  all  thought, 
as  a  demand  alike  of  brain  and  soul,  of  the  outward 
nature  that  surrounds  him  and  the  inward  nature  that 
is  made  to  know  and  judge  of  these  outward  things  and 
to  trace  back  facts  and  laws  to  their  only  possible  origin 
in  the  personal  thought  and  personal  act  of  a  personal 
God,  he  has  come  to  stand  not  only  upon  a  broad  and 
lofty  ground,  but  beside  all  the  best  thinkers  of  the 
world.  For  some  of  those  thinkers  whose  philosophic 
theories  are  often  regarded  as  tending  towards  the 
denial  of  a  personal  God,  make  haste  to  deny  the  infer- 
ence. Herbert  Spencer  claims  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
correlation  of  forces  does  not  exclude  thfit  of  God,  and 
Tyndall  hastens  to  correct  the  inferable  Atheism  of  his 
Belfast  address. 

And  so  the  world's  experience  of  philosophy  and 
even  of  speculation  leads  a  man  back  to  the  place  where 
Solomon  was  brought — the  place,  beneath  the  fear,  love 
and  service  of  God,  from  which  he  never  should   have 


22      A   TOUNG    man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE, 

wandered,  and  which  he  entreats  every  young  man  never 
to  leave. 

Or,  if  one  has  been  tempted  to  think  it  brave  to 
doubt  about  God  and  the  soul  and  immortality,  this  book 
will  serve  as  a  tonic  for  his  faith.  One  book  of  Solomon 
the  Ecclesiastes  is  the  book  of  doubts  ;  or  rather  the 
book  of  doubts  solved.  In  that  book  Solomon  recounts 
the  old  arguments  used  when  he  was  a  sceptic,  when  he 
was  a  pleasure  seeker,  when  he  was  astray  in  idolatry. 
We  see  him,  hear  him  at  his  worst ;  and  then,  with  him, 
go  back  to  the  "  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,"  in  the 
devout  recognition  and  the  earnest  service  of  God.  But 
in  the  "Proverbs"  there  is  a  strong  joyous  faith  which 
the  writer  not  only  possesses  but  commends  to  the  young 
men  of  the  world.  The  young  man  is  addressed  as  capa- 
hle  of  faith.  God  made  man  to  believe.  The  gi-eat 
difference  between  him  and  the  higher  animals  is  very 
largely  in  the  fact  that  he  has  the  capacity  for  faith  ; 
the  ability  to  believe  upon  testimony.  The  beast  has  no 
such  power.  The  brutes  can  remember,  can  do  many 
acts  singularly  like  reasoning.  But  they  cannot  collect 
and  compare  evidence  and  believe  and  so  act  upon  it. 
The  men  of  fifty  years  ago  collected  various  items  of 
knowledge  ;  and  the  boy  of  to-day  starts  where  they 
ended  ;  for  he  is  able  to  believe.  Not  so  the  colts  of  to- 
day ;  for  their  sires  collected  no  testimony.  There  is 
neither  capacity  to  believe  nor  amassed  material  on  which 
to  exercise  faith.     Something  can  be  done  by  interbreed- 


THE  YOUNG  man's  BOOK.  23 

ing  to  develop  other  powers.  Bat  no  capacity  for  faith 
•in  testimony  can  be  developed  in  the  brute  creation. 
Hence  progress  for  them  is  impossible.  They  have  no 
faculties  adapted  to  faith  in  others'  testimony.  They 
are  made  to  know  what  they  can  through  eye  and  through 
ear,  by  touch  and  by  taste.  Man  alone  is  capable  of 
faith.  He  receives  most  of  his  knowledge  by  credence. 
He  believes  it  on  the  testimony  of  others.  Man,  nnlike 
the  brutes,  is  by  his  nature  a  believing  animal.  When 
he  has  no  faith  in  testimony  he  is  no  better  than  a 
brute.  A  man's  great  characteristic  is  power  to  believe 
— to  believe  the  testimony  of  his  fellow-man  and  the 
revelation  of  his  God. 

Some  young  men  are  tempted  to  think  that,  since  we 
have  the  power  of  doubting  as  well  as  the  power  of  be- 
lieving, we  are  to  work  both  by  doubt  and  by  belief.  But 
we  have  the  power  of  doubting  just  as  we  have  the  power 
of  sinning.  We  sin  by  perverting  our  powers.  They 
were  given  us  not  for  sin  but  for  service.  So  we  have 
eyes  for  seeing,  but  we  have  power  to  put  them  out. 
Nevertheless  God  gave  us  eyes  not  that  we  might 
bfe  blind  with  them,  but  see  with  them.  Seeing  is  the 
legitimate  use  of  the  eyes,  just  as  believing  is  the  legiti- 
mate use  of  the  faculties  of  the  mind  and  soul.  And 
what  blindness  is  to  eyes  made  for  seeing,  that  doubt- 
ing is  to  a  mind  made  for  believing.  When  shutting  the 
eye  and  closing  the  ear  are  the  best  ways  of  seeing  and 
hearing,  then  doubting  will  be  the  best  way  of  gaining 


24:    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

knowledge  about  truth  and  duty.  That  young  man 
who  supposes  that  if  he  is  just  a  little  sceptical,  he  shall 
be  more  likely  to  know  what  is  truthful,  makes  a  terrible 
mistake.  The  habit  of  doubting  is  the  least  reasonable 
of  all  habits.  For  a  man  was  made  to  believe  ;  and  he 
had  better  believe  wrongly  on  some  subjects,  than  to 
believe  nothing  on  any. 

There  can  be  no  progress  by  doubt  and  negation 
except  in  error.  But,  says  one,  "  Would  you  not  have 
a  man  doubt  an  error,  and  is  not  such  a  doubt  a  helj) 
toward  coming  to  the  truth."  We  answer  that  if  a  man 
doubts  an  error  because  he  is  in  the  habit  of  doubting, 
he  will  doubt  the  truth  for  the  same  reason.  We  would 
have  him  see  and  believe  the  truth,  and  then  whether 
he  doubts  or  docs  anything  else  with  the  error,  is  of  no 
consequence.  Let  any  young  man  see  that  the  believ- 
ing and_  not  the  doubting  spirit  is  the  guide  to  truth. 
For  God  made  us  and  Jesus  commands  us  to  believe. 
So,  too,  if  we  are  made  to  believe,  there  is  sometldng  to 
he  lellevcd.  God  made  the  eyes  to  see  something.  If  the 
feet  are  to  stand,  there  is  provided  an  earth  to  stand  upon. 
If  man  is  a  believing  animal  there  is  somewhere  truth 
to  be  believed.  Truth  must  be  a  positive  thing.  It  is 
of  God.  For  God  is  the  "  God  of  truth."  It  is  spme- 
timcs  said  that  the  truth  to  any  man  is  what  he  honestly 
believes  it  to  be.  "  It  is  truth  to  him,  though  error  to 
another."  If  that  were  so,  truth  would  not  be  truth, 
but  only  each  man's  fancy.     But  God  made  the  mind  to 


THE  YOUNG  MAN's  BOOK.  25 

believe,  and  the  truth  to  be  believed.  When  a  yonng 
man  says  "I  cannot  decide  among  so  many  religions," 
he  says  either  that  God  has  not  given  him  brains  enough 
to  believe,  or  else  has  withheld  the  trutli,  so  that  ho 
cannot  know  it.  If  he  says  the  first  he  denies  his  own 
manhood  ;  if  he  says  the  second  he  condemns  his  God 
for  so  making  the  mind  and  not  making  the  truth  which 
the  mind  was  made  to  believe. 

In  dealing  with  his  doubts  a  young  man  should  also 
be  careful  and  not  deem  doubting  the  sign  of  a  stronger 
intellect.  It  is  far  from  that.  Anybody  can  doubt. 
And  a  man  who  is  floundering  in  a  sea  of  doubts  has  no 
right  to  call  out  to  others  to  come  and  see  how  brave 
and  strong  a  swimmer  he  is.  The  strong  and  bravo 
swimmer  is  he  who  gets  through  and  gains  the  other 
shore,  and  stands  firmly  on  the  rock.  He  who  can 
never  quite  make  up  his  mind  on  any  subject  is  not 
usually  praised  for  vigor  of  intellect.  The  young  man 
who  begins  a  trade,  a  business,  a  profession,  and  then, 
speedily  doubting  his  ability  or  taste  for  it,  turns  to 
another  only  again  to  doubt  his  ability,  is  a  young  man 
who  awakens  only  pity  for  his  want  of  perception  or  of 
purpose.  He  who  cannot  make  up  his  mind  on  any 
public  question,  who  always  doubts  how  to  vote,  gets 
no  praise  for  manliness.  Doubt  and  indecision  are  marks 
of  weakness  rather  than  strength,  and  this  book  of  the 
"  Proverbs  "  breathes  all  through  it  a  bracing  atmosphere 
of  faith  in  truth,  in  right,  in  manhood  and  in  God.     It 

2 


26    A  TOUKG  man's  difficulties  wiTa  HIS  bible. 

shows  on  every  page  the  native  nobility  of  the  man  who 
is  strong  alike  in  the  integrity  of  his  outward  virtue 
and  his  inward  faith. 

The  plmi  of  the  book  of  the  Proverbs  is  in  harmony 
with  the  design  of  its  author.  Its  sayings  are  often  used 
by  us  in  disjointed  fragments.  For  it  is  portable  wisdom. 
But  then  any  separate  part  is  richer  when  seen  in  its 
connection  with  the  scope  of  the  entire  book.  It  is  not 
a  chance  medley  of  miscellaneous  remarks.  It  is  no 
mere  scrap-book.  It  is  far  from  being  a  confused  mass 
of  apothegm  and  epigram.  The  casual  observer  of  the 
heavens  on  a  winter's  night  might  at  first  think  the 
skies  were  full  of  bright  disorder.  To  him  it  might  seem 
as  if  God  had  scattered  here  and  there  the  dust  of  stars 
carelessly  over  the  firmament.  But  his  friend  bids  him 
observe  the  lines  of  gigantic  boundary,  tells  him  of  the 
order  and  place  of  each  constellation  and  shows  him  that 
instead  of  chaos,  there  is  plan  in  tbe  skies.  So  it  is 
with  these  proverbs.  They  seem  like  a  whole  firmament 
of  gems.  Such  is  their  point  and  brilliancy  that  the  very 
things  that  make  them  proverbs  give  them  also  their 
seeming  abruptness  and  lack  of  connection.  But  the 
plan  is  there,  and  study  will  bring  it  out,  until  we 
admire  the  setting  as  much  as  the  gems  themselves. 

The  first  part  of  the  book  comprises  nine  chapters. 
In  these  the  importance  of  a  well  grounded  and  firmly 
settled  piety  is  insisted  upon  for  every  young  man. 
The  dangers  and  duties  of  early  life  are  pointed  out  so 


THE  TOU^STG  MAN'S  BOOK.  27 

clearly  that  this  portion  of  the  book  has  been  called  the 
**  Young  Man's  Directory."  The  second  part,  compris- 
ing the  next  fourteen  chapters,  supposes  that  the  clerk 
or  apprentice  or  student  has  acquired  his  business,  his 
trade  or  his  profession,  and  is  ready  jo  step  forth  into 
actual  life.  It  tolls  him  how  to  deal  with  men  in  such  a 
way  as  to  be  prosperous  and  at  the  same  time  please  the 
Lord.  This  second  part  may  be  called  the  ''  Merchant's 
Directory."  The  third  division,  though  endorsed  by 
Solomon,  is  the  work  of  the  son  of  a  noble  mother,  who, 
with  that  mother  in  mind,  sets  forth  the  glories  of  true 
womanhood.  It  is  the  finest  word  painting  in  litera- 
ture ;  and  that  too  in  a  line  where  the  poets  of  tlie 
world  hav^  woven  their  choicest  garlands  and  sung  their 
sweetest  songs.  But  if  these  are  the  main  divisions  of 
the  book,  it  comports  well  with  its  plan,  that  all  through 
it,  there  should  be  delightful  episodes  ;  the  bowers  of 
fancy  where  the  poet  may  sing  his  verses,  and  the  gar- 
dens where  the  philosopher  may  walk  without  inter- 
ruption while  talking  to  the  admiring  disciples,  who, 
after  the  manner  of  eastern  scholars,  love  to  call  some 
veteran  in  wisdom  by  the  name  of  master. 

In  a  gallery  of  art  there  are  large  and  even  colossal 
objects  in  one  picture,  while  another  is  a  miniature  of 
not  more  than  a  hand's  breadth.  And  here  in  this 
gallery  are  pictures  with  a  solitary  figure — a  single  pro- 
verb ;  and  there  are  also  pictures  of  broadest  artistic 
grouping.     Here  is  a  brief  sentence,  and  there  a  long 


28      A  YOUHG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

allegory.  At  one  turn,  we  see  the  gilded  coverings  strip- 
ped from  some  sin,  and  at  the  next,  the  polished  and 
barbed  arrow  goes  home  to  the  heart  of  a  cherished  wrong. 
And  the  whole  is  so  condensed  and  pithy,  so  full  and 
yet  so  keen,  with  outward  duty  mentioned  and  yet  the 
right  heart  so  insisted  upon,  piety  blended  with  morality 
and  morality  so  enforced  by  piety,  that  the  book  is 
always  venerable  but  never  stale,  can  always  be  consulted 
yet  never  exhausted.  The  oldest  finds  in  it  food  for 
thought  and  the  youngest  a  diversion  and  a  delight. 
Those  who  enjoy  the  sketches  of  character  and  those 
equally  who  love  to  see  a  condensed  argument  in  a  single 
sentence,  can  find  in  this  book  the  thing  that  suits  their 
taste.  Will  that  single  proverb  ever  grow  obsolete 
while  men  love  their  holy  dead — the  proverb  that  says, 
''The  memory  of  the  just  is  blessed  ;"  or  will  men  ever 
cease  to  own  the  aptness  of  the  saying  "  Tiie  heart 
knoweth  its  own  bitterness  and  a  stranger  intermed- 
dleth  not  with  its  joys  ?  "  And  who  has  not  been  com- 
pelled to  say  as  he  has  met  the  experiences  of  life, 
"  Faithful  are  the  woiinds  of  a  friend,  but  the  kisses  of 
an  enemy  are  deceitful  ?  "  And  how  pertinent  the  sen- 
tence, "  The  beginning  of  strife  is  as  the  letting  out 
of  water ;  therefore  leave  ofi  contention  before  it  is 
meddled  with."  What  convert  coming  into  the  peace 
of  God's  forgiveness  has  not  repeated  those  words, 
"  Wisdom's  ways  are  ways  of  pleasantness  and  all  her 
paths  are  peace."    Lord  Bacon  has  been  applauded  for 


THE  YOUNG  MAN'S  BOOK.  29 

his  saying  "  Knowledge  is  power."  But  pnt  the  word 
wisdom  for  the  word  knowledge,  and  Solomon  had  said 
the  same  thing  ages  before. 

Observe  also  that  many  of  these  proverbs  get  their 
power  from  some  picture  in  them.  A  comparison  of  a 
single  word  in  the  heart  of  a  pithy  sentence  has  made  it 
easy  to  remember,  and  pertinent  for  quotation.  *'  There 
is  that  scattereth  and  yet  increaseth ; "  "  He  that 
watereth  shall  be  watered  ; "  "  He  that  ruleth  his  spirit 
is  better  than  he  that  taketli  a  city  ;  "  "  The  slothful 
man  saith  there  is  a  lion  without;"  "A  word  fitly 
spoken  is  like  apples  of  gold  in  pictures  of  silver."  And 
if  any  man  thinks  these  proverbs  are  mere  truisms,  let 
him  pause  over  them  and  study  them  till  they  reveal 
themselves.  He  will  find  that  there  is  a  heart  behind 
them.  For  they  rise  higher  and  strike  deeper  than  the 
mere  surface  of  our  ordinary  life.  I  never  knew  a  man 
of  sagacity,  of  practical  skill  in  dealing  with  men,  who 
was  not  fond  of  this  Book  of  Proverbs.  Such  men  have 
often  these  proverbs  close  at  hand,  an  exhaustless 
treasure  for  daily  use. 

The  moral  sketches  that  are  scattered  through  the 
book  are  worthy  of  our  study.  They  are  exceedingly 
graphic.  Perhaps  there  is  no  more  terrible  sketch  in 
the  Bible  than  that  given  in  the  opening  chapter.  A 
young  man  is  warned  not  to  go  out  into  actual  life  with- 
out true  piety.  If  he  shall  do  it,  all  will  go  wrong.  If 
he  shall  do  it,  God  will  be  angry.     God  against  him. 


30      A   TOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

calamities  will  sooner  or  later  gather  about  him,  and 
destruction  come  like  an  armed  man  and  there  be  none 
to  deliver.  "They  shall  call  but  I  will  not  answer. 
They  shall  seek  but  not  find."  To  the  young  man  that 
laughs  at  religion  and  mocks  at  pity,  who  goes  the  voy- 
age without  the  chart  that  God  has  given,  he  saith,  "  I 
will  laugh  at  your  calamity  and  I  will  mock  when  your 
fear  cometh  ;  when  distress  and  anguish  come  upon 
you."  And  the  reason  for  all  this  is  given,  in  these 
words,  "  because  they  did  not  clioose  the  fear  of  the  Lord/' 
So  that  in  the  opening  chapters  we  have  the  key  note 
of  the  whole  book,  and  no  where  is  there  any  declining 
from  this  grand  and  lofty  tone  with  which  the  book 
begins,  viz  :  that  the  fear  and  love,  the  trust  and  the 
joy  of  the  Lord  are  the  essential  things  in  a  true  and 
noble  life.  The  high  and  beautiful  severities  of  moral- 
ity and  religion  stand  forth,  the  glorious  mountain 
summits  that  are  never  to  be  lost  sight  of  in  all  our  climb- 
ing. The  air  grows  purer,  the  vision  broader.  The 
very  precipices  of  doom  are  for  a  salutary  warning  that 
we  venture  not  too  near  the  shelving  edge  of  any  evil, 
lest  we  provoke  God  to  leave  us.  And  thus  alike  by 
warning  and  by  wooing,  by  words  that  startle  and  those 
that  encourage,  by  the  fear  of  God  and  by  the  love 
of  God,  we  are  instructed,  admonished,  j^rofited.  The 
ruin  of  the  godless  man  is  made  in  this  opening  chaj^ter 
a  minister  of  salvation  to  all    who  propose  to  "  walk 


THE   YOUNG   MAK's   BOOK.  31 

not  in  the  way    of    tlie  wicked  and  refrain  the  foot 
from  their  path." 

Another  of  these  character-sketches  is  peculiar  to 
eastern  life  as  seen  to-day  among  the  unaltered  customs 
of  the  Orient.  There,  enervated  by  the  climate,  by  lack 
of  general  enterprise,  by  the  ease  with  which  the  few 
necessities  of  life  are  gained,  men  will  doze  away  a  life- 
time in  an  idleness  that  has  no  prosperity  to  excuse  it. 
The  idle  man  in  the  East  is  not  a  retired  rich  man,  but 
often  one  who  has  need  of  daily  labor.  And  Solomon's 
picture  of  the  idler  is  drawn  so  sharply  that  we  can 
almost  see  him  in  his  sloth.  There  he  is,  prone  on  his 
bed,  though  the  sun  has  risen,  and  others  are  at  work. 
His  fields  are  grown  over  with  weeds.  "Yet  a  little 
more  sleep,"  he  says  drowsily  when  one  would  rouse  him, 
— "  Yet  a  little  more  sleep,  and  a  little  more  slumber,  and 
a  little  more  folding  of  the  hands  to  sleep" — and  he 
has  gone  again.  Roused  once  more,  he  turns  lazily  on 
his  bed  and  says,  "There  is  a  lion  without  in  the  way  ; 
yet  a  little  more  sleep."  Do  we  need  to  study  this  pic- 
ture ?  If  we  had  lived  in  the  former  ages  before  indus- 
try had  become  a  passion  of  the  nations,  some  exhorta- 
tion towards  worldly  thrift  might  have  been  needful  for 
us.  But  industry  is  the  New  England  virtue,  and  a  lazy 
man  is  the  contempt  of  the  community.  And  yet  this 
outward  thrift  is  often  unattended  with  any  inward 
aspiration.  "  To  get  on  in  the  world "  becomes  the 
great  aim.     The  intellect  is  often  untilled,  and  the  soul 


33      A   TOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

is  a  luxuriant  wilderness  of  weeds,  the  chance  growth  of 
accident  on  a  soil  that  needs  to  be  reclaimed  and  re- 
deemed for  God.  Idlers  on  one  field  we  despise.  Then 
must  there  be  care  lest,  looking  on  the  j^icture  which 
Solomon  has  placed  before  us,  we  should  fail  to  see  his 
two-fold  meaning ;  fail  also  to  see  that  Ave  may  have 
escaped  from  the  one  to  be  ensnared  in  the  other  and 
the  sadder  peril. 

And  the  drunkard  is  also  sketched  by  our  royal 
artist.  The  twenty-third  of  Proverbs  has  been  called 
the  ''drunkard's  looking-glass."  "  Look  not  \ii[)on  the 
wine  when  it  is  red ;  when  it  giveth  his  color  in  the 
cup ;  when  it  moveth  itself  aright."  Do  you  see  the 
man  in  the  picture  as  he  balances  daintily  the  cup,  as  he 
looks  lovingly  upon  it,  lifts  it  carefully,  then  drains  it  off 
deliberately  with  the  gusto  of  the  finished  drinker.  He 
does  not  look  within.  He  does  not  see  the  bottom  of 
the  cup.  But  Solomon — -and  he  had  seen  it  in  a  sad 
experience— will  allow  us  to  look  through  his  eyes.  And 
now  looking  closely  at  the  picture,  you  will  see  that 
Solomon  has  painted  a  serpeiit  in  the  cup.  How  plain 
it  is.  It  is  visible  to  every  one  except  to  the  drinker 
himself.  And  as  he  drinks  "  it  biteth  like  a  serpent 
and  stingeth  like  an  adder."  The  deadly  wine  begins 
to  circulate.  Through  every  part  of  the  system  it  is 
borne.  And  now  comes  the  result.  "  Who  hath  woe  ? 
"Who  hath  sorrow  ?  "  "  Who  hath  contentions," — is  ever 
quarrelsome?     "Who    hath    babbling?" — that  word 


THE  YOUi^G  man's  BOOK.  33 

*' babbling,"  is  the  very  word  ;  for  the  silly  besotted  man 
has  now  become  a  creature  to  whom  blaspliemy  is  wit 
and  nonsense  wisdom.  "  Who  hath  wounds  without 
cause  ?" — received  of  course  in  some  low  drunken  brawl. 
"  Who  hath  redness  of  eyes  ?"  "  Those  that  tarry  long 
at  the  wine.''  It  seems  then  that  a  man  may  become 
wretchedly,  boisterously,  filthily  drunk,  though  he  may 
only  drink  wine."  He  continues, — "■  Thine  eyes  shall 
behold  strange  women."  Strong  drink  feeds  the  flames 
of  a  raging  lust.  "  Thine  heart  shall  utter  perverse 
things.  Yea ;  thou  shalt  be  as  one  that  lieth  down  in 
the  midst  of  the  sea,  or  as  he  that  lieth  upon  the  top  of 
a  mast."  Is  not  that  an  exact  description  of  the  stag- 
gering gait  of  a  drunkard  ?  "  They  have  stricken  me, 
thou  shalt  say,  and  I  was  not  sick .;  they  have  beaten 
me,  and  I  felt  it  not."  The  poor  inebriate  has  been 
kicked  and  bruised  by  the  men  who  induced  him  to 
drink>  and  he  did  not  know  it  at  the  time.  And  when 
he  comes  to  understand  it,  instead  of  resolving  never 
again  to  touch  the  maddening  draught,  he  cries  out, 
"  When  shall  I  awake  ?  I  will  seek  it  yet  again." 

Such  is  Solomon's  picture.  And,  if  I  could  get  every 
young  man  who  reads  this  volume  to  look  fairly  upon 
that  picture  in  its  faithful  lines  and  its  terrible  colors, 
and  tben  could  show  him  that  there  was  the  remotest 
possible  danger  of  such  a  fall  for  himself ;  or  that  some 
friend  might  thus  fall ;  or  that  there  is  one  solitary 
man  on  earth  who  might  come  down  into  this  misery  ; 
2* 


34    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

and  if,  on  the  other  hand,  I  could  show  liim  that  by 
total  abstinence  he  could  certainly  preserve  himself,  could 
prevent  his  friend,  could  hinder  even  an  enemy  from 
this  result,  I  should  have  an  argument  of  no  small  force 
to  press  upon  him  for  signing  at  once  the  most  stringent 
of  pledges  to  avoid  all  that  intoxicates. 

And  surely  there  never  was  a  more  strict  pledge  than 
this  of  Solomon.  "  Look  not,"  he  says.  We  think  it 
enough  to  say,  drink  not.  But  he  knew  the  force  of 
the  temptation.  The  color,  the  sparkle,  the  very  sight 
may  awake  the  demon  of  appetite  that  is  never  allayed. 
"  Look  not  on  the  wine." 

There  is  also,  in  these  Proverbs  a  picture  of  true  and 
noble  luomanTiood.  And  it  stands  right  over  against  a 
vivid  portraiture  of  her  whose  house  goes  down  to  death. 
In  the  latter  sketch,  the  wiles,  the  tempting  words,  the 
whole  process  of  allurement  are  described  ;  and  then  the 
folly,  the  wretchedness,  the  miserable  and  accursed  end 
of  him  "  Who  goeth  after  her  straitway  as  an  ox  goetli 
to  the  slaughter."  "  Her  house  is  the  way  to  hell  going 
down  to  the  chambers  of  death."  But  the  other  por- 
trait, how  beautiful — beautiful  in  itself  and  beautiful  in 
contrast.  It  is  the  portrait  of  a  noble  woman — the 
picture  of  a  mother  by  her  son.  "  The  heart  of  her 
husband  doth  safely  trust  her  so  that  he  shall  have  no 
need  of  spoil."  "  She  worketh  with  her  hands."  Tlie 
writer  had  no  idea  of  a  human  doll  too  dainty  for  labor 
and  fit  only  for  show.     "  She  riseth  and  giveth  meat  to 


THE  TOUl^G   man's   BOOK.  35 

her  household."  She  is  domestic,  and  yet  while  domestic 
when  there  is  need  for  it,  she  is  skilful  in  trade.  *'  She 
considereth  and  buyeth  a  field."  She  is  industrious— 
for  it  is  said,  *' her  hands  hold  the  distaff."  She  is 
charitable.  ''She  stretcheth  out  her  hands  to  the 
poor."  But  mind  and  heart  are  not  neglected.  ''  She 
openeth  her  mouth  with  wisdom."  *'  Her  children  rise 
up  and  call  her  blessed."  She  has  helped  and  not  hin- 
dered her  husband's  prosperity  ;  for  it  is  said  "  Her  hus- 
band is  known  in  the  gates,  when  he  sitteth  among  the 
elders  of  the  land." 

I  would  have  a  young  man  believe  in  God  with  a 
practical  daily  faith.  I  would  have  him  believe  in  good 
men,  and  keep  company  with  them.  But  next  to  this, 
I  would  have  him  believe  in  a  pure,  noble  womanhood. 
There  are  doubtless  base  women.  There  are  frivolous 
creatures,  who  live  with  no  plan  but  to  see  and  to  be 
seen.  And  such  women  a  young  man  should  avoid  as 
he  would  the  plague.  But  there  are  those  whom  God 
sends  for  a  man's  help  and  guidance.  He  who  believes 
in  noble  womanhood  can  find  it.  He  who  sneers  at 
woman's  virtue  only  proves  himself  to  be  base.  A  true 
man  shows  the  nobility  of  his  nature  by  his  high  ideal  of 
womanhood ;  and  in  turn  they  who  are  to  meet  that 
ideal  have  need  to  be  careful  of  purity,  honor,  intelli- 
gence and  religion. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  the  general  spirit  and 
tone  of  this  book  of  the  Proverbs.     Its  peculiarity  above 


36     A   TOUNG   man's   difficulties   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

any  other  one  book  of  the  Bible,  is  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
directly  addressed  to  yonng  men.  And  this  sketch  of 
its  contents  is  placed  here  at  the  beginning  of  the  dis- 
cussion as  a  sort  of  a  portico,  royal  in  its  origin,  attract- 
ive in  its  form,  through  which  we  may  enter  the  temple 
of  revelation,  and  mark  certain  mysteries,  certain  won- 
ders, even  certain  diflBculties  that  have  perplexed  many 
a  young  man  and  kept  him  from  joining  in  the  worship. 
It  may  be  that  Ave  shall  find  some  of  them  to  be  less  em- 
barrassing, less  difficult  than  we  had  thought.  It  may 
be  that,  visiting  this  temple  at  first  from  a  natural  and 
laudable  curiosity,  we  shall  find  ourselves  inwardly  per- 
suaded to  be  more  than  spectators  and  shall  remain  to 
share  the  service,  our  voice  rising  in  the  song  and  our 
heart  uttering  the  Amen. 


CHAPTER  11. 
Is  THE  Bible  teue  ? 

"  You  believe  in  the  Bible,  I  presume/'  said  a  man 
to  his  fellow  passenger  in  the  railway  car.  *'  Certainly, 
I  do,"  was  the  instant  reply.  "  I  presume  you  believe 
in  it  because  of  your  mother's  teaching,"  said  the  first 
man,  in  a  sneering  tone.  "  Precisely  so,"  was  the  an- 
swer, "  I  do  believe  in  the  Bible  for  that  among  other 
good  reasons."  "I  don't  see,"  was  the  reply,  ''how 
that  can  be  a  good  reason.  Suppose  your  mother  had 
been  born  a  Hottentot,  you  would  then  have  believed  in 
idolatry,  or,  if  she  had  been  an  Indian  woman,  you 
would  have  had  faith  in  Juggernaut."  ''I  probably 
should,"  replied  the  other.  "  I  am  surprised  to  hear 
you  own  it.  Nine-tenths  of  the  people  who  believe  in 
the  Bible  have  no  better  reason  for  their  faith  than  just 
this  ;  their  fathers  taught  it  to  them,  and  their  mothers 
made  them  say  their  prayers,  and  so  they  believe  in  reli- 
gion. I  am  independent.  I  don't  mean  to  believe  any 
thing  because  somebody  else  does  so."  "  Stop,"  said 
the  other,  "  Stop  right  there  and  hear  me  a  moment. 
I  was  taught  the  Bible  by  my  mother,  by  her  life  as  well 
as  her  lips.     The  Bible  made  my  mother  the  best,  tho 


38    A  Tou]sj"G  ma-k's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

sweetest,  the  noblest  woman  I  ever  knew.  It  was  her 
strength  in  life,  her  comfort  in  sickness,  her  all  in 
death.  I  saw  what  it  did  for  her,  and  I  started  with 
every  presumption  in  its  favor.  I  have  other,  and  per- 
haps to  you,  they  would  be  stronger,  reasons  for  believ- 
ing in  my  Bible.  But  let  me  tell  you  that  for  myself, 
the  strongest  of  all  reasons  is  that  my  mother,  and  she  was 
such  a  mother,  taught  me  its  truths.  I  had  a  Christian 
liome.  I  have  travelled  some  ;  and  I  know  that  there  is 
not  a  Christian  home  on  the  continent  of  Africa  ;  there 
is  not  one  in  Asia,  aside  from  what  this  religion  of 
the  Bible  has  done  within  a  few  years  just  past.  In  the 
hut  of  a  Hottentot,  or  in  the  tent  of  a  Bedouin  Arab, 
I  should  have  been  taught  in  another  religion,  exactly  as 
I  should  have  been  taught  in  another  kind  of  astronomy, 
and  natural  philosophy  and  geology.  What  then  ?  Shall 
I  think  less  of  the  true  system  of  astronomy  because  I 
was  educated  to  believe  it  in  Christian  New  England,  or 
doubt  the  facts  of  natural  history  because  Agassiz 
taught  them  to  me  in  America  ?  Shall  I  believe  less 
firmly  the  facts  of  science  because  I  learned  them 
under  circumstances  most  advantageous,  in  places  where 
they  could  best  be  learned,  and  from  the  best  of 
teachers  ?  And  as  for  you,  sir,"  turning  to  the  other, 
*'  let  me  say  just  this  ;  either  you  had  or  did  not  have 
an  early  Christian  home.  If  you  had  a  pious  father  and 
a  praying  mother,  and  were  taught  the  Biblical  truths, 
and  now  have  turned  away  from  the  Holy  Book,  you  are. 


IS  THE  BIBLE  TRUE  ?  39 

I  am  certain,  far  less  of  a  man  morally  for  it.  For  you 
have  not  the  sanctions  of  that  book  when  you  do  right ; 
nor  its  warnings  when  tempted  to  do  wrong.  You  are 
not  so  pure,  so  strong  in  principle.  Eight  and  wrong, 
good  and  evil  are  not  words  with  so  much  meaning  as 
they  would  have  had  if  you  had  read  your  Bible  and 
striven  to  shape  your  life  by  its  directions.  Or,  if  you 
had  no  Christian  home,  if  your  parents  were  not  devout 
people,  then  you  started  in  life  under  a  terrible  disad- 
vantage, a  disadvantage  to  your  moral  nature  as  great  as 
it  would  have  been  to  your  physical  nature  if  you  had 
been  born  without  feet  or  without  hands.  And  instead 
of  you  reproaching  me  for  my  mother's  religion,  I  am 
the  one  who  should  pity  you  for  the  terrible  calamity 
under  which  you  commenced  life — the  calamity  of  not 
having  a  Christian  home."  "  Yes,"  continued  the 
young  man,  "  I  do  believe  in  the  Bible,  in  part  at  least, 
because  my  mother  did.  And  it  is  dearer  because  it 
was  her  Bible,  and  my  God  is  more  reverenced  because 
he  was  my  mother's  God,  and  Christ  is  loved  because  he 
was  my  mother's  Saviour,  and  heaven  is  more  precious 
because  the  heaven  of  the  Bible  is  my  mother's  heaven." 

And  the  sceptic  was  silent.  What  was  there  for  him 
to  say  ? 

Many  a  young  man  educated  to  believe  the  Bible  is 
entirely  satisfied  for  himself.  He  knows  that  the  book, 
which,  universally  obeyed,  would  bring  universal  joy — 
for  that  is  its  result  as  far  as  its  precepts  are  followed — 


40    A  YouKG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

must  be  God's  book.  His  Bible  is  true.  And  yet,  he  is 
disturbed  sometimes  by  the  objections  brought  against 
it.  He  wishes  to  be  more  familiar  with  the  outward 
evidences  of  the  integrity  of  the  Bible,  that  he  may 
answer  the  sneers  of  opposers,  and  also  that  he  may  feel 
sure,  on  other  and  independent  grounds,  of  the  truth- 
fulness of  the  Scriptures.  And  there  are  some  young 
men  about  whom,  early  in  life,  were  thrown  hosts  of 
difficulties  and  perplexities  ;  and  these  were  accomj)anied 
with  sneers  and  innuendoes  against  Christians.  Such 
young  men  have  no  appreciation  of  the  moral  agument 
from  the  elevation  of  a  Christian  homo,  nor  can  they 
understand  the  moral  power  of  those  benign  influences 
which  make  up  the  moral  atmosphere  into  which  the 
more  favored  young  men  of  this  country  were  born.  So 
that  the  argument  to  be  presented  in  this  chapter,  hav- 
ing these  two  classes  of  young  men  in  mind,  must  needs 
be  both  historical  and  moral. 

We  will  ask  two  questions.  One  of  them  is  this  : 
'^  Is  the  Bible  triie?"  The  other,  immediately  following 
it  in  logical  order,  shall  be  :  "Is  the  Bible  inspired?" 

In  asking  whether  the  Bible  be  true,  the  question  is 
of  the  same  kind  as  that  raised  when  we  inquire  whether 
Macaulay's  or  Motley's  or  Bancroft's  histories  are  true. 
It  is  an  inquiry  whether  the  pei'sons  who  wrote  these 
books  of  the  Bible  were  eye-witness  of  the  facts,  or,  if 
not,  whether  they  had  access  to  documents  which  they 
used  so  fairly  that  we  can  trust  them  as  we  do  other 


IS   THE   BIBLE  TRUE  ?  41 

historians.  When  they  state  facts  in  their  narrative,  we 
propose  to  ask  first  as  we  do  about  any  other  writers  of 
history,  Are  they  credible  men?  Are  they  men  whose 
character,  opportunities  for  knowledge,  whose  presumed 
motives  and  whose  conduct  in  life  warrant  our  confi- 
dence ?  Finding  them  reliable  historians,  men  who  state 
actual  historic  facts,  it  is  indeed  possible  that  wc  shall 
be  compelled  to  go  further.  It  may  be  that  if  true,  they 
are  true  about  such  things,  and  in  such  a  way  true,  that 
we  shall  be  obliged  to  go  on  and  to  own  their  inspiration. 
But  the  inquiries  before  us  now  are  with  reference  to 
their  truthfulaess,  their  integrity,  their  credibility. 

Nor  can  we  hei'e  take  up  in  order  the  vast  number 
of  facts  they  state,  and  examine  them  in  detail.  That 
would  be  to  write  a  commentary  on  the  Bible.  Nor  can 
we  quote  at  length  the  testimony  of  travellers  in  the 
lands  of  the  Bible,  nor  recite  the  evidence  accumulating 
every  year  from  Assyrian,  Babylonian,  Judean  and  Egyp- 
tian tombs  and  monuments — that  vast  mass  of  corrobora- 
tion of  many  of  the  more  important  statements  which" 
are  given  in  the  scriptures.  This  is  a  field  of  unsi^eak- 
able  richness  and  of  unfailing  interest.  Nor  can  any 
man  spend  an  hour  with  such  a  book  as  Rawlinson's 
"  Historical  Illustrations  of  the  Old  Testament "  without 
wonder  at  the  new  evidence,  reserved  for  the  investiga- 
tions of  the  present  generation,  of  the  minute  accuracy 
of  many  portions  of  our  historical  scriptures.  To  enter 
on  this  field  is  impossible  for  us  in  this  volume.     Nor  is  it 


43    A  YOUis^G  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

needed.  For  the  strictly  historical  argument  is  really 
very  simple;  is  narrowed  down  to  the  establishment  of  a 
very  few  facts  which  any  man  of  ordinary  judgment  can 
easily  understand,  and  about  which  he  can  easily  make 
up  his  mind.  The  whole  inquiry  concerns  the  New  Tes- 
tament. And  of  the  New  Testament  we  need  only  to 
consider  the  integrity  of  the  four  Gospels.  For  if  these 
biographers  of  Jesus  are  to  be  trusted,  our  Lord  indorsed 
the  Old  Testament  and  promised  subsequent  books  of 
the  New  Testament  similar  to  those  which  we  have  now 
in  the  Epistles  and  the  Kevelation.  So  that  the  whole 
inquiry  for  us  is  just  this ;  have  we  reason  to  believe, 
that  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke  and  John  have  given  us  a  fair 
and  correct  account  of  what  Jesus  Christ  said  and  did  ? 
To  this  inquiry  the  whole  matter  comes  at  length  ;  and 
on  this  thing  depends  the  historic  argument. 

Nobody  doubts  the  existence  of  just  these  sacred 
books  which  we  call  the  Old  Testament  in  the  days  of 
Jesus.  He  quoted  that  volume,  citing  those  very  facts 
to  which  most  objection  is  made,  viz  :  the  fall,  the  flood, 
the  attempted  sacrifice  of  Abraham,  the  descending 
manna,  the  lifted  serpent  and  the  story  of  Jonah. 
Sometimes  he  quotes  the  volume  itself ;  sometimes  he 
gives  the  name  of  the  special  book  from  which  he 
quotes.  To  a  people  venerating  their  sacred  writings 
to  the  verge  of  bibliolatry  he  said  ''search  the  Scrip- 
tures," and  he  continually  was  saying  that  certain  things 
were  done,  "  that  the  Scriptures  might   be  fulfilled." 


IS   THE   BIBLE   TRUE  ?  43 

So  that  the  whole  question  of  the  integrity  of  the  Old 
Testament,  though  abundantly  capable  of  defence  on 
independent  grounds,  for  us,  in  our  present  argument, 
may  be  said  to  be  involved  in  that  of  the  truthfulness  of 
the  New  Testament.  And  as  the  Gospels  indorse  the 
Old  Testament,  so  they  also  carry  with  them  the  integ- 
rity of  the  Acts,  the  Epistles  and  the  Kevelation.  As- 
sured that  we  have  a  fair  record  of  what  Jesus  did  and 
said,  we  find  among  his  undoubted  discourses  direct 
promises  of  a  superhuman  guidance,  not  only  in  bring- 
ing to  mind  what  he  had  said  to  his  disciples,  but  in 
guiding  them  into  all  truth  ;  even  that  which  he  could 
not  tell  them  while  he  was  in  the  body.  He  had  more 
truth  to  reveal  when  the  Holy  Spirit  should  be  given 
and  they  were  to  be  shown  the  things  to  come.  And 
assuming  that  these  Gospels  accurately  report  him, 
where  shall  we  find  the  fulfillment  of  his  promise  except 
in  these  later  New  Testament  books  ?  These  later 
writers  make  the  claim,  and  they  are  the  only  serious 
claimants  to-day.  If  Jesus  spoke  truly  in  the  promise 
as  recorded  in  the  Gospels,  then  these  other  New  Testa- 
ment books  are  the  fulfillment  of  his  words. 

The  whole  matter  comes  down  to  very  narrow  limits. 
A  thousand  incidental  questions  may  be  raised  which 
have  only  an  incidental  bearing.  The  decision  as  to 
three  vital  questions  will  decide  the  whole  case.  They 
are  these.  First :  did  books  substantially  like  our  four 
Gospels    exist    in    the    earliest    Christian     centuries  ^ 


44      A   TOUJSTG   man's   DIFFICULTIES    WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

Second:  did  the  authors  of  them  enjoy  opportunities  for 
knowing  what  they  affirmed  ;  and  were  they  such  per- 
sons that  we  can  trust  them  to  tell  us  the  truth  ?  And 
Third:  have  these  four  histories  of  Christ  been  pre- 
served with  as  reasonable  a  degree  of  integrity,  and  have 
they  been  as  fairly  transmitted  to  us  as  have  the  works 
of  other  ancient  historians  ? 

As  to  the  first  of  these  inquiries,  viz  :  the  early  ex- 
istence of  the  books,  little  need  be  said  ;  for  the  unani- 
mous verdict  of  scholars  is  well  known.*  Volney  and 
his  school,  in  an  unfortunate  hour,  ventured  to  utter 
doubts  as  to  whether  Jesus  and  his  apostles  had  ever 
lived.  It  was  instantly  shown  that  heathen  and  Jewish, 
as  well  as  Christian  historians  testified  to  the  existence 
and  influence  of  him  and  his  religion.  And  in  the  face 
of  the  fact  that  Christ's  religion,  as  recorded  in  these 
books,  had  named  an  era  in  human  history,  this  class  of 
sceptics  saw  that  they  had  blundered.  And  no  de- 
cently informed  man  repeats  these  absurdities  to-day. 
Eosseau,  himself  belonging  to  another  school  of  seep 
ticism,  published  an  answer  to  Volney,  in  which  he  in- 
sists, that  if  Jesus  did  not  live  those  Avho  invented  such 
a  character  as  that  given  in  the  four  Gospels,  putting 

*  Those  wlio  desire  a  full  discussion  of  this  matter  can  find  it 
in  the  elaborate  work  of  Tiscljendorf,  "  When  were  our  Gospels 
Written."  See  also  Westcott's,  "Introduction  to  Gospels."  In 
these  lectures,  I  have  endeavored  to  give  the  results  reached  in 
the  present  state  of  Biblical  scholarship,  without  entering  at  all 
into  the  processes  by  which  those  results  have  been  gained. 
This  is  trae  both  of  this  and  the  following  chapter. 


IS  THE   BIBLE  TRUE  ?  45 

sncli  words  into  the  lips  of  an  imaginary  being — have 
performed,  in  so  doing,  a  greater  miracle  than  any  that 
they  ascribed  to  Jesus.  To-day  the  assent  is  uniform  as 
to  the  existence  of  these  biographies  in  the  earliest 
Christian  centuries — a  fact  allowed  by  Strauss  and 
Eenan.  No  matter,  here  and  now,  for  the  way  in  which 
these  two  distinguished  authors  account  for  the  fact. 
No  matter  for  any  theory,  once  attracting  some  notice 
and  now  vanishing,  of  myth  as  mingled  with  historic 
truth.  No  matter,  so  far  as  the  present  part  of  our 
inquiry  is  concerned  as  to  whether  the  books  contain 
only  a  mere  substratum  of  truth  ;  no  matter  if  any  one 
should  have  the  hardihood  to  venture  again  the  absurd- 
ity of  Volney  that  the  very  basis  was  false.  The  argu- 
ment now  is  about  the  early  existence  of  these  books,' 
the  Gospels.  And  here  there  is  an  absolute  unanimity  ; 
all  admitting  that  such  documents,  the  basis  of  appeal 
for  both  friends  and  foes  as  to  the  alleged  facts,  did 
exist  in  the  earliest  Christian  centuries." 

'  "  The  strictest  liistorical  investigations  bring  this  compila- 
tion— even  by  tlie  admission  of  Strauss  himself — within  thirty  or 
forty  years  of  the  time  when  the  alleged  wonders  they  relate  are 
said  to  have  occurred." — Ilenry  Rogers  in  "  Reason  and  Faith." 

'  On  this  point  see  the  exhaustive  treatment  of  Westcott  in 
"  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  C'ospels."  He  shows  that  the 
"  Oral -Gospel,"  was  the  first  Gospel — the  story  of  the  facts  as  told 
by  word  of  mouth  ;  the  apostles  repeating  the  facts.  And  he 
shows  why  it  was  so  for  years  in  Palestine  ;  and  how,  at  length, 
out  of  this,  came  the  Four  Written  Gospels  ;  the  apostles  com- 
mitting their  facts  to  writing  when  in  the  course  of  nature  they 
must   leave  their  work — a  work  in   which  they  could  have  no 


46    A  YOUi^G  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

These  four  histories  of  Jesus  Christ  began  to  be  retid 
in  churches  as  they  became  known ;  John's  Gospel  be- 
ing thus  indorsed  and  employed  last,  because  last  writ- 
ten, and  because  one  early  sect  deemed  the  teaching  of 
John's  Gospel  to  be  in  opposition  to  their  peculiar  views/ 
But  these  objections  were  soon  removed,  and  the  Chris- 
successors.  Jesus  himself  wrote  no  line.  Not  that  he  was  un- 
able so  to  do ;  for  his  knowledge  of  "  letters,"  i.  e.,  languages, 
amazed  some  of  his  hearers.  He  knew  the  Aramaic,  his  native 
speech  ;  he  quoted  the  Hebrew  ;  he  used  Latin  words,  again  and 
again,  with  the  precision  as  to  derivation  which  marks  the 
scholar ;  he  quoted  from  the  Greek  language  the  very  words  of 
the  Septuagint.  In  adopting  the  oral  method  rather  than  the 
written,  he  did  exactly  what  other  teacliers  of  his  age  were  wont 
to  do.  And  so  far  from  an  objection,  it  is  a  confirmation  of  Chris- 
tianity, that  it  represents  our  Lord  as  adopting  at  the  outset  the 
usual  oral  method. 

'  For  an  account  of  this  sect,  the  Alogi,  see  Westcott's  "Intro- 
duction, etc."  ;  in  which  there  is  shown  the  reason  why  this  heret- 
ical sect  hesitated  for  a  time  to  acknowledge  this  Gospel  as  in- 
spired. But  the  point  Iiere  made  in  my  argument  is  not  the  in- 
spiration but  the  existence  of  the  book.  And  as  to  its  genuineness 
as  history,  it  is  perhaps  a  stronger  proof  of  the  carefulness  of  the 
early  churches,  that  while  there  was  the  least  doubt, they  hesitated. 
But  Qoubt  for  the  reason  given  by  the  Alogi — that  it  condemned 
their  doctrine — is  a  doubt  which  is  an  evidence  of  the  integrity 
as  well  as  the  existence  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Not  one  solitary 
fact  was  ever  alleged  against  the  genuineness  of  the  book,  save 
this  that  I  have  named.  The  hint  which  was  thus  furnished 
1700  years  ago  has  been  taken  up  and  used  by  unbelievers  within 
the  last  fifty  years.  And  the  decision  of  1700  years  ago  is  now 
reaffirmed.  Ewald,  the  great  German  critic,  who  has  devoted 
immense  labor  to  the  matter,  sums  up  the  whole  discussion  as 
follows  :  "  Every  argument,  from  every  quarter  to  which  we  can 
look,  every  trace  and  record  combine  to  render  any  serious  doubt 
upon  the  question  ahsoiutely  impossible." 


IS  THE    BIBLE  TKUE  ?  47 

tians  of  the  early  Christian  centuries  received  the  books 
of  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  John  as  the  authentic  docu- 
ments of  the  new  religion. 

The  second  inquiry  is  as  to  the  authorship  of  these 
books.  All  accounts  represent,  the  authors  of  them  as 
once  residents  of  Palestine.  All  accounts  represent 
them  as  plain  men  ;  in  part  Galilean  fishermen  ;  with 
one  only  of  them,  Luke,  the  physician,  a  man  of  pro- 
fessional education.  The  writers  were  plainly  not 
scribes  of  the  law ;  they  were  not  ecclesiastically  edu- 
cated men.  But  it  is  equally  sure  that  they  wei-e  not 
untutored  peasants.  They  show  a  peculiar  but  an  un- 
trained ability.  They  see  things  clearly,  and  have  the 
mastery  of  a  style  of  description  that  in  its  simplicity 
is  at  a  world-wide  remove  from  that  of  the  elaborate 
historians  of  the  age.  They  had  just  keenness  and  cul- 
ture enough  to  make  the  very  best  class  of  witnesses  to  a 
question  of  fact,  and  to  enable  them  to  state  that  fact 
in  honest,  unadorned,  but  accurate  language.  That 
they  were  men  of  either  the  ability  or  training  required 
to  originate  such  a  character  as  that  of  Jesus  Christ,  is 
too  absurd  for  any  man's  belief !  What !  Galilean 
fishermen  describing  such  a  character,  putting  him  into 
the  most  trying  positions,  in  which  he  never  once  failed, 
placing  words  in  his  mouth  that  have  led  the  wisdom  of 
the  ages, — they  giving  us  the  only  ideal  of  perfect  man- 
hood that  is  found  in  all  the  literature  of  the  world — 
and  doing  this  out  of  their  own  brain — mere  novelists 


48    A  TOUN"G  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

depicting  an  imaginary  hero  !  To  believe  this  is  a  far 
greater  demand  upon  our  faith  than  to  believe  any  or 
all  the  miracles  that  are  found  in  the  Bible.  Our  Lord 
must  have  lived,  and  these  men  must  have  been  with 
him  in  the  intimacies  of  social  life  as  well  as  in  his  public 
teachings.  They  must  have  been  witness  of  his  mira- 
cles and  so  his  historians*.  An  actual  life,  and  the  his- 
torians of  that  life  his  friends,  intimates,  disciples — 
these  two  tilings  are  demanded  by  the  whole  scoj)e  and 
the  entire  detail  of  the  books  themselves.  Nor  is  there 
another  claimant  to  the  authorship  of  them.  It  is 
they,  or  the  autliors  of  books  that  would  have  made 
a  world-wide  reputation  for  any  body,  are  unknown. 
The  verdict  of  the  world  is  given  in  favor  of  Mat- 
thew, Mark,  Luke  and  John  as  the  writers  of  the  re- 
spective books  which  are  everyvv^here  known  under  their 
names. 

As  to  the  theory  once  defended,  but  now  entirely 
abandoned,  that  they  were  imj)ostors,  it  is  enough  to  re- 
mark that  the  ordinary  motives  to  imjiosition  are  wanting, 
and  that  it  is  not  possible  to  imagine  motives  for  such  a 
kind  of  deception,  much  less  that  these  men  could  have 
done  it,  and  tlien  could  liave  succeeded  in  foisting  their 
imposition  upon  the  keenest  age — the  Augustan  age — 

*  Mark's  Gospel  is  an  exception  only  iu  appearance.  For,  (1,) 
the  internal  evidence  that  it  is  the  work  of  an  eye  witness  is 
stronger  in  Mark  than  iu  any  other  Gospel.  And  (2,)  the  Gospel  is 
Peter's  Gospel  as  to  facts,  while  it  is  Mark's  as  to  arrangement 
and  verbal  authorship. 


IS  THE   BIBLE   TRUE  ?  49 

wliicli  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Impostors  could  not  if 
they  would  and  would  not  if  they  could  invent  such  a 
character  as  that  of  Christ. 

The  theory  of  imposture  surrendered,  is  that  of  self- 
.deception  any  more  plausible  ?  Enthusiasts  with  fancies 
for  facts  would  have  fared  ill  in  publishing  their  pre- 
tended histories  to  a  keen  generation  in  whicli  not  a 
single  false  or  even  exaggerated  statement  could  have 
passed  unquestioned.  Names,  dates,  places,  references  to 
streets  and  to  persons,  to  public  facts  and  private  details, 
are  scattered  through  these  Gospels  Avith  lavish  hand. 
And  Avith  such  means  of  detecting  the  error  furnished 
to  them  in  the  very  documents  themselves,  it  is  certain 
that  the  skilful  opponents  of  Christianity  would  have 
seized  upon  any  alleged  fact,  and  have  j)roved  it  false, 
if  that  could  have  been  done  ;  and  in  this  way  they 
would  have  inflicted  such  a  serious  blow  upon  the  new 
religion  as  to  have  crushed  it  at  the  outset.  For  in  no 
way  could  they  have  so  destroyed  the  force  of  the  new 
faith  as  by  showing  an  error  in  its  authentic  documents  on 
a  question  of  public  fact.  Had  such  error  been  detected 
it  would  have  been  at  once  published  to  the  world  ;  and, 
once  published,  the  work  containing  it  would  not  have 
been  allowed  to  perish.  But  no  such  work  exists.  Keen 
opponents  there  were,  who,  if  Jews,  ascribed  the  Gospel 
facts  to  Satan,  and  if  Gentiles,  ascribed  them  to  magic; 
in  either  case  owning  the  facts  ;  and  always  quoting  the 
facts  from  these  accepted  narratives  of  the  Evangelists. 
3 


60    A  TOUNQ  man's  difficulties  avith  his  bible. 

And  as  to  tlie  theory  that  these  Gospels  might  have 
deen  written  and  placed  in  their  present  form  partly  by 
good  men  and  partly  by  bad  men — a  theory  just  now 
most  popular  with  objectors,  and  a  theory  the  most 
desperate  and  the  least  plausible  of  any — it  is  enough  to 
say  that  what  might  have  been  is  not  a  proper  matter  of 
historic  inquiry.  No  absurdity  can  be  greater  than  to 
imagine  the  doings  of  this  singular  conclave  Avhere  pious 
saints  and  impious  knaves  have  met  for  the  purpose  of 
foisting  Christianity  on  the  world,— one  party  supply- 
ing a  miracle  and  the  other  furnishing  the  teaching  to 
match  it,  and  the  two  woven  together  so  firmly  in  one 
narrative  that,  like  the  seamless  robe  of  Jesus,  no  men 
may  part  it.  Or,  if  the  good  men  and  the  bad  men  are 
supposed  to  have  worked  separately,  what  more  incredi- 
ble than  that  bad  men  should  retouch  the  draft  of  good 
men,  and  their  patch-work  of  evil  be  undiscernible  from 
the  original  fabric,  unless  it  is  the  still  more  incredible 
supposition  that  good  men  should  consent  to  retouch 
the  draft  of  evil  men,  knowing  it  to  be  the  evil  work  of 
such  men,  and  yet  indorsing  it  !  Strange  good  men, 
those  ! 

The  third  point  of  vital  importance  is  as  to  whether 
there  has  been  a  fair  transmission  to  us  of  these  Four 
Gospels.  They  were  at  once  earnestly  sought  and  highly 
prized  by  the  friends  of  the  new  religion.  The  doctrines 
founded  upon  these  facts  which  they  state  were  made 
instantly  matters  of  controversy.     Every  one   can  see 


IS  THE  BIBLE  TRUE  ?  51 

that  it  would  be  impossible  to  interpolate  a  new  miracle 
or  new  sermon  into  these  Gospels  to-day.  And  for  the 
same  reason  it  would  have  been  impossible  fifty  years 
after  the  books  Avere  written.  Enemies  were  alert,  and 
friends  were  already  divided  in  their  views  of  doctrine 
and  duty.  To  have  added  any  thing  of  importance, 
any  new  fact,  favoring  any  particular  school  of  belief, 
Avould  not  have  been  allowed  any  more  than  it  would  be 
to-day.  In  the  second  and  third  centuries,  amid  the 
divergence  of  beliefs,  it  was  wished  by  some  of  the  sects 
to  obtain  if  possible  the  attestation  of  the  apostles  to  the 
new  doctrines  and  practices.  But  mark  one  univer- 
sally conceded  fact.  The  heretics,  not  daring  to  tam- 
per with  the  recognized  documents,  invented  others, 
new  Gospels,  to  some  of  which  the  more  bold  ventured 
to  affix  the  names  of  the  apostles.  But  to  all  the  Chris- 
tian world  by  the  close  of  the  second  century  the  fraud 
was  as  apparent  as  it  is  to  us  to-day.  A  few  persons 
were  deceived  for  a  time.  But  the  imposture  is  as  evident 
as  would  be  the  interpolation  of  a  sentence  of  Jefferson 
Davis'  speech  on  secession  into  the  Emancipation  Proc- 
lamation of  Abraham  Lincoln.  In  a  subsequent  discus- 
sion this  matter  will  be  named  again.  It  is  mentioned 
here  only  to  show  that  the  very  existence  of  such 
fraudulent  books,  is  a  positive  proof  that  the  accepted 
documents  could  not  be  then  altered  by  the  insertion  of 
any  new  miracle  or  doctrine.'     They  could  no  more  have 

>  Westcott,  iu  his  "  Introduction,  etc."  has  shown  that  in  the 


52      A   YOUNG   man's   difficulties  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

been  purposely  corrupted  or  changed  then,  than  they 
can  be  to-day.  Of  course  no  miracle  is  claimed  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Scriptures.  In  printing  the  Bible 
even  with  our  splendid  facilities  there  occur  typographi- 
cal errors.  Indeed  it  has  been  claimed  that  no  volume 
of  the  size  of  the  Bible  has  ever  been  printed  without 
some  mistake.  But  these  errors  do  not  harm  the  sub- 
stance of  a  volume.  The  most  of  these  are  of  about  the 
same  importance  as  the  omission  to  dot  an  i  or  cross  a  t 
on  the  written  page.  They  are  never  alleged  as  against 
the  integrity  of  an  author's  work.  Changes  in  languages, 
differences  caused  by  thousands  of  various  readings  as  in 
other  ancient  works,  have  had  their  influence  upon  the 
text  of  the  New  Testament.  But  these  things  injure 
the  integrity  of  the  books  just  as  little  as  they  do  the 
works  of  Csesar  and  Sallustand  Virgil  and  Demosthenes. 
These  verbal  variations  are  merely  curious  questions  of 
nice  scholarship,  and  do  not  affect  any  one  of  the 
great  Christian  facts.' 

The  Gospel  writers  are  nnimpeached.  The  records 
are  fairly  preserved.     For  the  jealousy  of  friends  as  well 

second  century  tbe  whole  New  Testament,  as  now  we  have  it, 
Epistles,  and  Acts  and  Revelation — the  Gospels  of  course  much 
earlier — was  accepted  with  the  same  reverence  with  which  Chris- 
tians regard  the  Scriptures  to-day. 

1  "  By  all  the  omissions  and  all  the  additions  contained  in  all 
the  manuscripts  no  fact  is  rendered  obscure  or  doubtful." — Pren. 
Hopkins.  "  By  none  of  these  variations  etc.,  shall  one  be  able  to 
extinguish  the  light  of  a  chapter  or  disguise  Christianity  but 
that  every  feature  of  it  will  be  the  same." — Bentley. 


IS  THE  BIBLE  TEUE  ?  53 

as  the  hostility  of  foes  has  combined  to  preserve  these 
documeuts  from  any  considerable  error.  They  are 
trustworthy  histories  of  actual  events.  And  these  true, 
as  has  been  shown  before,  they  carry  with  them  the 
truth  of  the  Old  Testament  which  they  indorse  and  the 
remaining  portions  of  the  New  Testament  which  they 
promise. 

It  would  be  of  interest  to  note  how  the  Gospels  once 
ascertained  to  be  true  and  so  the  other  parts  of  the  scrip- 
tures also  true,  that  they  in  turn  yield  their  evidence  to 
these  four  Gospels.  Given  the  books  that  go  before,  given 
also  those  that  follow,  and  somewhere  there  must  be 
such  books  as  these  gospels  ;  and  it  is  these  or  none  that 
can  fill  the  conditions  of  the  question.  The  Hebrew 
ritual  obliges  us  to  find  somewhere  the  New  Testament 
Christ.  And  the  Acts  are  impossible  apart  from  the 
christian  facts  which  they  indorse  aud  out  of  w*hich  they 
grew.  And  Paul  takes  up  every  main  fact,  not  by  any 
special  purpose,  but  incidentally,  in  his  epistles,  so  that 
he  has  been  called  our  fifth  Gospel.*  But  all  this  is  in- 
cidental proof,  nor  need  it  be  entered  upon. 

The  vital  points  of  the  historic  argument  have  been 
presented,  and  the  proof  given  that  we  have  in  the  works 
of  Matthew,  Mark  and  Luke  and  John,  trustworthy 
histories,  and  that  in  a  fair  degree  of  purity  these  books 
have  come  down  to  our  own  times.     And  it  is  clear  that, 

1  See  this  idea  developed  in  an  article  "  Paul  as  an  Argument 
for  Christianity  "  in  "  Baptist  Quarterly,"  October,  1873. 


54      A  TOUKG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

these  points  proven,  we  may  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  a  hundred 
minor  questions,  even  if  they  have  difficulty  in  them. 
For  these  questions  are  of  side  issues,  and  they  bear  only 
remotely  on  the  subject.  The  opponents  of  Christianity 
have  skillfully  raised  many  a  discussion  on  these  side 
issues  ;  and  the  friends  of  a  historic  religion  have  allowed 
themselves  to  be  seduced  from  the  main  question  to  en- 
gage in  controversy  on  points  not  vital  to  the  main  ar- 
gument. Says  Isaac  Taylor, "The  subjects  of  debate  in 
the  Christian  Argument  have  come  to  us  in  inverted  order. 
The  logical  order  is  this  :  Are  i\\e  princijjal  facts  on  the 
reality  of  which  every  thing  rests,  real  or  not  ?  If  they 
are  true,  the  conclusion  carries  with  it  all  we  need.  If 
they  are  untrue,  then  a  laborious  discussion  concerning 
such  things  will  barely  repay  the  few  who  abound  in 
leisure  and  learning." 

In  a  very  simple  way  elsewhere  we  ascertain  a  ques- 
tion of  common  fact ;  as  for  instance,  of  the  sailing  of  a 
ship  from  Liverpool  to  New  York.  There  are  a  thou- 
sand incidental  questions  that  can  be  asked  about  that 
ship,  all  of  them  of  interest,  some  of  them  highly  im- 
portant for  other  purposes,  but  none  of  them  having  the 
least  bearing  on  the  inquiry  "  did  the  ship  actually  make 
the  alleged  voyage  from  Liverpool  to  New  York." 
Questions  might  bo  raised  about  her  hull  as  wood  or 
iron  ;  about  her  cordage  and  cable  as  wire  or  rope  ; 
about  her  capacity  as  so  many  or  not  so  many  tons  ; 
about  her  engines  as  American  or  English  j  about  her 


IS  THE   BIBLE   TKUE  ?  55 

cargo  and  of  what  proportion  was  dry  goods  and  what 
hardware  ;  of  lier  officers  and  her  cicw  as  capable  or  in- 
efficient, and  of  her  voyage  as  smooth  or  rough.  And  it 
is  possible  to  conceive  of  men  as  exercising  their  ingenu- 
ity so  sharply  on  these  things  about  that  ship,  and  rais- 
ing thereby  such  a  multitude  of  difficulties,  that  some 
would  be  inclined  to  express  a  doubt  as  to  whether  there 
was  such  a  ship  and  such  a  voyage.  And  this  is  exactly 
what  has  been  done  about  the  Bible.  Opponents  have 
seized  upon  minor  matters  and  pressed  them.  They 
have  drawn  off  public  attention  from  the  very  few  vital 
facts,  against  which,  once  established,  all  objections  are 
useless.  They  have  discussed  questions  as  to  sails  and 
hull  and  course  and  cargo.  Meanwhile  there  are  just 
a  few  facts  which  can  easily  be  settled,  as  to  the  voyage 
of  the  ship,  and  which  decide  fully  the  whole  matter. 
They  are  these  three  :  Did  she  sail  ?  And  the  record 
on  the  books  of  the  Custom-House  at  Liverpool  settles 
that  inquiry.  Did  she  arrive  in  New  York  ?  And  the 
record  on  the  books  at  New  York  is  the  evidence.  Is 
the  record  correctly  transcribed  and  faithfully  for- 
warded ?  And  this  third  inquiry  can  be  easily  made, 
and  an  exact  answer  be  given.  And  this  closes  the  evi- 
dence. Precisely  so  in  the  case  before  us.  The  three 
questions  we  have  discussed  as  to  the  Four  Gospels, 
cover  all  that  is  essential.  Nor  should  any  young  man 
allow  himself  to  be  confused  by  inquiries  not  vital  to 
the  historic  argument  for  the  integrity  of  these  books. 


56    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  v.'itii  his  bible. 

The  argument  stands  unimpeached.  And  the  religion 
of  the  Bible  is  able  to  make  the  high  claim,  that  it  is  a 
religion  of  facts,  and  a  religion  that  presents  these  facts 
as  proof  that  it  is  from  God. 

2.  To  the  moral  argument  we  now  turn.  The  gen- 
eral influence  of  the  Bible  on  men  is  a  fact  that  one 
cannot  overlook.  The  question  is  not  whether  any  per- 
fectly obey  it.  But  whether  any  are  made  better  by  it ; 
whether  its  tone  is  healthful.  Does  it  elevate  society  to 
have  the  Bible  circulate  in  the  homes  of  a  community, 
to  have  the  Sabbath  it  enjoins  devoutly  kept,  to  have  the 
religion  of  the  Bible  studied  and  j^racticed  in  some  fair 
degree  ?  I  need  not  ask  these  questions  of  any  young 
man.  They  scarcely  admit  of  being  stated ;  for  the 
whole  thing  is  almost  self-evident.  There  is  not  a  piece 
of  property  that  is  not  worth  more,  nor  an  industry  that 
does  not  thrive  the  better,  for  the  practice,  however  par- 
tial and  imperfect,  of  the  precepts  of  the  religion  of  the 
Bible.  The  church  building  increases  the  value  of  the 
property  in  the  town  ;  and  purely  as  a  means  of  general 
thrift,  of  juiblio  virtue  and  moral  education,  in  more 
than  one  New  England  community,  men  of  sceptical 
views  have  given  liberally  towards  the  erection  of  the 
sanctuary  and  the  support  of  the  Sabbath  School.  It  is 
true  that  some  have  insisted  upon  charging  the  wars 
and  persecutions  unfortunately  too  common  in  human 
history  to  the  influence  of  the  Bible.  But  this  is  to 
confound  its  pure  teachings  with  man's  perversions,  mis- 


IS  THE  BIBLE  TRUE  ?  57 

takes  and  hypocrisies.  As  reasonably  might  an  argu- 
ment be  constructed  against  all  government  on  the 
ground  that  men  had  wrested  it  from  its  purpose  and 
used  it  as  an  instrument  of  tyranny.  If  every  crime 
has  been  at  some  time  perpetrated  under  the  name  of 
religion  or  of  government,  we  are  not  to  attribute  that 
fact  to  any  thing  that  belongs  to  pure  religion  or  good 
government.  Surely  we  are  able  to  make  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  Christianity  of  the  Bible  and  man's 
corruption  of  it  in  human  history.  And  the  good  in- 
fluence of  Christianity — good  in  exact  proportion  to  its 
purity — is  seen  everywhere.  It  is  the  strength  of  law. 
It  gives  purity  to  public  sentiment.  It  favors  learning. 
It  extends  the  domain  and  streugtliens  the  motives  of 
all  sweetest  and  most  blessed  charities.  It  gives  sacred- 
ness  to  social  life.  Everywhere  it  is  the  friend  of  truth- 
fulness, of  honesty,  of  purity,  of  every  noble  virtue. 
Could  bad  men  have  given  the  world  such  a  volume  as 
the  Bible,  even  if  they  would ;  or  would  they  if  they 
could  ? 

'  It  is  moreover  a  singular  fact  that  those  who  hnoio 
tills  hooh  test  love  it  fnost.  They  are  best  qualified  to 
judge  of  it.  The  devoutest  students  of  it  are  just  those 
most  thoroughly  persuaded  of  the  divine  origin  of  the 
book.  True,  some  persons  of  intellectual  eminence  have 
rejected  Christianity.  But  in  nearly  every  case,  they 
have  not  known  intimately  the  New  Testament.  For 
it  by  no  means  follows  that  because  one  is  eminent  as  a 


68    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

naturalist,  or  as  a  mathematician,  or  as  a  historian,  or 
as  a  literary  critic,  he  is  therefore  a  Biblical  scholar.  A 
mathematician  and  not  a  poet  is  the  best  judge  of  a 
question  in  the  calculus.  Indeed  the  poet's  opinion 
may  be  worthless.  And  so  on  these  questions  of  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  Bible,  an  array  of  great  names  is  some- 
times quoted  on  the  side  of  unbelief.  The  eminence  of 
these  men  in  their  own  department,  so  far  from  qualify- 
ing them  for  authorities  in  such  Biblical  questions,  is 
often  the  very  thing  that  renders  their  opinions  on  this 
matter  almost  valueless.  Hume's  historical  inquiries 
were  confined  to  a  certain  secular  line.  Huxley's  natu- 
ralistic studies  are  not  of  the  slightest  value  in  questions 
of  religion.  Large  attention  elsewhere,  hinders  neces- 
sarily large  attention  here.  Hume  gave  himself 
to  history  and  philosophy.  His  works  would  stand 
substantially  as  now  if  he  had  never  seen  a  New  Testa- 
ment. For  his  arguments  are  directed  against  all  reli- 
gions, and  indeed  against  all  actual  knowledge  of  every 
kind.  He  aimed  to  sever  the  relation  of  cause  and 
effect.  He  needed  no  acquaintance  with  the  New  Tes- 
tament to  construct  a  metaphysical  argument  which 
strikes  a  blow  equally  at  all  religion  and  all  science. 
Voltaire's  name  has  been  quoted  among  those  whose 
scholarship  has  been  arrayed  against  revelation.  But 
he  had  no  scholarship  at  all  on  this  matter.  He  made 
blunders  that  Avould  have  disgraced  a  Sunday-school  boy 
of  a  dozen  years,  in  quoting  Biblical  incidents.     He  gave 


IS   inE   BIBLE   TKUE  ?  59 

his  life  to  other  books,  and  did  not  know  the  Book  he 
denied.  And  Gibbon  at  22  years  of  age  or  thereabouts 
says,  "  Here  I  susi^ended  my  religious  inquiries."  And 
he  confesses  to  an  idle  life  before  this  time.  Surely 
such  a  man,  however  eminent  in  other  lines,  has  no 
weight  at  all  as  against  the  sentiment  "  they  who  know 
the  Bible  best  love  it  most."  There  are  men  of  majes- 
tic intellect,  and  of  calm,  careful,  profound  scholarship, 
men  who  have  made  this  book  their  study  for  years — 
men  like  Newton  and  Pascal  and  Leibnitz  and  Edwards 
and  Chalmers  ;  and  these  are  the  men  competent  to 
testify  in  the  domains  of  scholarship.  Nor  scholars 
only.  There  are  tens  of  thousands  of  honest,  careful, 
sound-minded  men  in  every  walk  of  life  who  have  just 
lived  mentally  and  morally  on  this  book.  They  have 
thought  of  it  on  the  week  day  and  studied  it  on  the 
Sabbath.  They  Tcnoio  ilie  Boole.  If  an  imposture,  they 
would  be  the  first  to  discover  it.  If  it  did  them  harm 
to  practice  the  directions  of  the  book,  they  would  long 
ago  have  renounced  and  denounced  it.  They  are 
honest,  trustworthy  men,  if  there  are  any  such  on  earth. 
And  they  say  that  they  read  it  with  more  and  more 
interest  and  admiration  and  love  with  every  year  of 
their  life.     Such  evidence  is  not  to  be  set  aside. 

There  is  also  a  wide  difference  between  the  morality 
taught  by  the  writers  of  the  Scriptures  and  that  ex- 
pressly taught  by  the  leading  sceptics  of  the  century 
now  ending.     Some  of  these  writers  of  the  Bible  were 


60    A  TOUKG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

certainly  men  all  of  whose  acts  no  one  defends.     And 
liere  is  the  thing  to  be  noticed  ;  they  do  not  defend  them- 
selves.    In  wrong  doing  they  do  not  go  with  but  against 
their  own  teaching.     They  condemn  their  own  mistakes 
and  confess  their  own  sins.     We  had  not  known  those 
sins,  but  for  their  honest  confession  and  condemnation. 
Their  precepts  and  the  vast  preponderance  of  their  per- 
sonal conduct  are  certainly  on  the  side  of  virtue.     But 
what  of  the  teaching  of  men  like  Herbert,  who  declared 
that  lust  and  jDassion  were   no  more  blame-worthy  than 
hunger  or  thirst ;  like  Hobbs  who  maintained  that  right 
and  wrong  are  but  mere  quibbles  of  imagination  ;  like 
Bolingbroke   who   insisted   that   the   chief   end  of  man 
was   to  gratify  his  passions  ;   like  Hume  who  declared 
that  humility  is  a  vice  rather  than  a  virtue,  and  that 
adultery  elevates   human   character.     Paine  Avas  in  his 
last  days  a  drunkard,  and  Voltaire  was   found   by  his 
friends  to  be  so  often  a  liar  that  his  word  was  worthless. 
Let   a   company    of     men   believing    these    teachings 
organize  themselves  into  a  society  for  putting  them  into 
actual  practice   in  any  community,   and  that  commu- 
nity would   be  compelled  to    rise   and  expel   the   foul 
plague  from  their  borders.     In  short,  let  a  company  of 
men  undertake  to  obey   such   teachings   exactly   as   a 
church  is   organized   to  obey   the  teachings  of  Christ, 
and  let  them  do  it  as  far  as  Christians  obey  the  precepts 
of  the  Bible,  and  who  could  or  would  endure  it  ?    And 
while  the  Biblical  precepts  perfectly  obeyed  would  bring 


IS  THE   BIBLE   TRUE  ?  61 

almost  the  old  Eden  days  to  our  sorrowful  earth,  these 
precepts  of  sceptical  writers  perfectly  obeyed  would 
make  a  very  pandemonium  of  Avretchedness  and  abom- 
ination. 

The  moral  argument  for  the  Bible  plants  itself  upon 
the  substantial  agreement  of  its  different  parts.  Eevela- 
tion  is  progressive.  There  is  a  progress  of  development 
from  first  to  last.  And  truth  is  given  in  forms  more 
crude  in  the  earlier  and  more  finished  and  comprehen- 
sive in  the  later  books  of  the  Bible.  Hence  here  and 
there  those  merely  verbal  and  temporary  discords  wliioh 
serve,  as  musicians  say,  to  heighten  the  whole  effect. 
Those  who  would  make  capital  of  these  things  playing 
off  a  partially  revealed  truth  of  the  Old  Testament  as 
in  some  sense  antagonistic  to  the  full-orbed  truth  of  the 
New  Testament,  only  show  their  lack  of  appreciating 
the  breadth  of  God's  plan  in  his  Holy  Word.  And  as  to 
the  slight  discrepancies  of  the  Evangelists,  it  is  enough 
to  say  that  they  are  just  such  and  so  many  as  a  lawyer 
likes  to  have  among  the  witnesses  on  the  side  of  his  client. 
For  they  prove  that  there  was  no  collusion,  no  agree- 
ment to  support  a  fraud.  These  little  discrepancies  are 
exactly  in  those  things  necessarily  omitted  in  the  mere 
sketches  and  fragmentary  notices  of  Jesus  Christ  which 
these  writers  profess  to  give  us.  As  between  any  two  of 
them,  often  a  single  word  supplied  incidentally  by  the 
third  gives  us  the  missing  link  that  was  needed  to  make 
the  story  coherent.     And   some   difficulties  remain  on 


G2    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

the  face  of  the  narratives  when  we  would  make  a  perfect 
harmony  of  the  order  of  the  events,  which  doubtless 
one  word  would  solve — a  word  that,  needless  then,  would 
be  helpful  now.  It  was  indeed  no  part  of  the  work  of 
either  to  indorse  the  others.  When  they  do  it,  it  is  not 
of  design.  Each  had  his  own  work  to  do,  and  did  it. 
Had  they  been  careful  of  their  own  harmony,  mutually 
indorsing  each  other,  their  evidence  would  have  been 
terribly  weakened.  But  their  carelessness  in  that  matter, 
their  "  abandon,"  to  their  work,  by  which  they  go  each 
sti'aight  to  his  own  mark,  without  one  thought  that 
Peter's  facts  may  cross  Matthew's,  or  John's  narrative  in- 
jure Luke's  story — their  perfect  unconsciousness  of  any 
suspicion — these  are  among  the  evidences  of  their  divine 
commission.  And  the  agreement  not  only  in  the  facts, 
but  what  is  far  more  important,  in  those  great  ideas 
that  run  through  the  Bible  as  to  God,  as  to  immor- 
tality, as  to  the  way  of  salvation,  as  to  a  judgment, 
as  to  future  awards — the  agreement  as  to  the  ideal  of 
Jesus  Christ  shown  by  the  four  writers  of  our  Gospels, 
shown  also  by  the  writer  of  the  Acts,  shown  also  by 
Paul,  by  Peter,  by  John  in  their  Epistles — this  is  the 
highest  and  best  possible  agreement,  an  agreement 
deeper  than  that  of  mere  words.  We  see  the  blended 
rays  of  the  same  great  solar  truth,  whether  beheld  in 
the  promise  of  its  dawning,  in  its  onward  march  up  the 
sky,  or  in  the  full  glory  of  its  midday  completeness. 
There  is  a  powerful  moral  argument  in  the  idea  of 


IS  THE  BIBLE  TRUE  ?  63 

Jes^is  Clirist  which  the  Scriptures  present.  Refer- 
ence has  been  ah-eady  made  (See  page  61)  to  the  fact 
that  the  writers  of  the  four  Gospels  are  in  substantial 
accord,  as  between  each  other,  in  their  portraiture  of  tlie 
character  of  Jesus  Clirist.  But  here  the  argument  is 
drawn  from  the  ideal  itself.  Whence  came  the  tliouglit 
of  such  a  person  ?  If  he  is  a  fiction,  existing  only  on 
these  pages,  somebody  originated  the  fiction.  And  who- 
ever that  person  or  that  company  of  persons,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  the  creation  of  such  a  character  was  too  great 
an  achievement  for  the  party  or  parties  to  remain  un- 
known. But  where  are  the  claimants  of  this  greatest  of 
honors  ?  Who  originated  the  idea  ?  Even  Rousseau, 
himself  in  some  respects  a  sceptic,  was  struck  with  the 
moral  majesty  of  the  conception.     He  writes  as  follows  : 

"Is  it  possible  that  a  book  at  once  so  simple  and 
sublime  should  be  the  work  of  man  ?  Is  it  possible  that 
the  sacred  person  whose  history  it  contains  could  be  a 
mere  man.  What  parity,  what  sweetness  !  Avhat  sub- 
limity in  his  maxims  !  What  profound  wisdom  in  his 
discourses  !  What  truth  in  his  replies  !  Shall  we  sup- 
pose the  evangelic  history  a  mere  fiction.  It  bears  not 
the  marks  of  fiction.  The  history  of  Socrates,  which  no- 
body presumes  to  doubt,  is  not  so  well  attested  as  that  of 
Jesus  Christ  :  the  marks  of  truth  are  so  striking  that 
the  inventor  would  be  a  more  astonishing  character  than 
the  hero." 

Again  I  ask  the  question  whence  this  idea  of  Christ  ? 


64    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

Did  a  knot  of  plebeians  in  Galilee,  the  most  despised 
portion  of  a  far-off  Roman  province,  themselves  un- 
skilled in  the  grand  conceptions  of  Grecian  or  Persian 
or  Arabian  poets  and  philosophers — did  they  invent 
Christ  ?  Setting  aside,  now  and  here,  the  absolute  im- 
possibility that  they  should  have  perfectly  depicted  him 
— depicted  him  with  just  enough  of  diversity  to  give 
unity  to  our  impression  of  him,  where  did  they  get  the 
ideal  jicrfect  man.  There  is  one,  and  only  one  explan- 
ation. Jesus  must  have  lived.  His  disciples  saw  him, 
listened  to  him,  reported  him.  The  Roman  hero  was 
no  such  character.  An  educated  Roman  would  have 
made  Jesus  say.  Blessed  are  the  brave,  the  heroic  and 
the  noble.  A  brutal  Roman  would  have  said,  Blessed 
are  they  that  can  strike  back  ;  the  men  of  nerve  and 
muscle  for  the  combat.  But  Jesus  said,  "  Blessed  are 
the  meek."  A  Grecian  would  have  made  him  say. 
Blessed  are  they  who,  wrapped  in  the  contemplation  of 
divine  i^hilosophy,  forget  the  common  herd  of  men,  above 
whom  they  stand.  But  Jesus  said, "  Blessed  are  the  poor 
in  spirit."  The  Pharisee  would  have  had  him  say, 
Blessed  are  the  exact  and  careful  in  the  ritual  law.  The 
Sadducee  would  have  had  him  say.  Blessed  are  they  who 
care  for  this  life,  as  the  real  life,  and  leave  the  future, 
if  there  be  a  future,  to  care  for  itself.  The  Essene 
would  have  had  him  declare.  Blessed  are  they  that  con- 
quer the  body  with  stripes  well  laid  on  for  righteousness' 
sake.     But  Jesus,  turning  from  every  form  of  Jewish 


IS   THE   BIBLE   TRUE  ?  65 

ideal,  said,  "  Blessed  are  the  pure  iu  heart,  for  they  shall 
see  God."  Hillcl,  the  first  Eabbi  of  the  age  of  Christ, 
would  have  said.  Blessed  are  the  educated  in  the  Levit- 
ical  law;  "for  no  common  person  is  pious."'  But 
Jesus  said,  "Come  unto  me  all  ye  who  labor  and  are 
heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest."  How  is  it  that 
here  we  have  a  character  absolutely  perfect  !  Whence 
came  the  idea  of  Jesus  ?  There  is  only  one  possible  an- 
swer. And  that  answer  owns  that  the  one  great  miracle 
that  of  Christianity,  its  sun  to  whicli  all  other  miracles 
are  but  the  stars,  is  the  character  of  Jesus  Christ ! 

^  His  very  words.  And  yet  the  Jews  to  avoid  the  force  of  the 
powerful  argument  in  support  of  Christianity  of  the  character  of 
Christ,  have  intimated  that  some  of  his  sayings  might  have  come 
from  their  Rabbi  Hillel ;  a  hint  not  lost  on  Renan  in  the  French 
novel  which  he  has  called  "  The  Life  of  Jesus." 


OHAPTEE  III. 
Is  THE  Bible  Inspieed  ? 

Pilate's  question  *'  What  is  truth,"  has  been  called 
the  question  of  the  ages.  For  we  are  made  up  in  such  a 
way  as  to  believe  in  truth.  And  no  matter  how  many 
wrong  answers  have  been  given,  the  fact  remains  that 
men  will  believe  that  truth  is  real,  and  that  the  truth 
ca}i  he  hnoivn.  Tliis  is  so,  of  course,  only  about  what 
can  be  proven.  And  we  have  seen  how  careful  is  the 
Bible  to  appeal  to  evidence.  Christianity  is  a  question 
of  fact.  It  offers  proof  of  its  truthfulness  in  miracle,  in 
prophecy,  in  peculiar  teaching,  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

But  every  young  man  oj)ening  the  pages  of  his  Bible 
can  see  that,  true  at  all,  the  book  is  peculiarly,  grandly 
true — a  kingly  book  among  men's  books.  The  tone  of 
it  is  unlike  anything  else  in  all  the  literature  of  the 
world.  It  asserts.  It  speaks  with  authority.  It  does 
indeed  give  proofs.  But  it  does  it  easily,  incidentally  ; 
never  with  labor,  as  if  men  were  hesitating  and  so  it 
must  hesitate  ;  never  as  if  doubting  somewhat  its  right 
to  the  most  direct  and  positive  speech  ;  never  as  if  its 
absolute   authority  could  be  questioned.     It  is  a  book 


IS  THE   BIBLE   INSPIRED  ?  67 

that,  allowed  to  have  any  claim,  must  be  allowed  all  it 
claims.  True  at  all,  it  is  true  iu  such  a  way,  and  about 
such  things,  that  there  is  not  nor  can  there  be  any  other 
sucli  volume  on  earth.  Nor  is  this  claimed  for  the 
Bible  simply  on  the  ground  of  its  literary  character.  lb 
has  indeed  poetry  that  is  sublime,  history  that  is  dra- 
matic in  its  form  and  careful  in  its  fact,  and  narrative 
that  is  unequalled  in  simplicity  and  dignity.  These  are 
the  indubitable  marks  of  human  genius.  It  needs  no 
proof  that  some  of  these  writers — the  claim  is  not  made 
for  all — were  men  of  exalted  ability.  They  have  made  a 
book  that  is  without  a  peer.  It  stands  up  alone,  apart, 
peculiar  in  its  claims,  giving  evidences  of  its  truthfulness, 
and  compelling  homage  for  the  genius  that  irradiates  its 
pages. 

And  now  comes  the  further  inquiry  as  to  this  Book, 
the  truthfulness  of  which  we  have  already  ascertained, 
whether  besides  human  genius,  there  is  also  divine  guid- 
ance ;  whether  God  had  any  thing  to  do  with  this  book 
in  a  sense  in  which  he  has  not  had  with  any  other  ; 
whether  the  book  has  not  only  the  human  inspiration 
of  exalted  genius,  but  also  the  superhuman  inspiration, 
not  of  angel  or  of  serajih,  but  of  God's  Holy  Spirit. 
And  the  inquiry  is  whether,  obliged  to  admit  as  much 
as  we  have  already  seen  with  reference  to  the  book,  we 
are  not  compelled  to  go  on,  and  to  admit  that  the  book 
is  divinely  inspired.  * 

Let  us  ask  what  is  meant  by  the  inspiration  of  the 


G8      A   YOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   AVITH   UIS   BIBLE. 

Scriptures  ;  next  consider  some  of  the  ohjections  to  this 
claim  ;  and  then  let  us  attend  to  any  direct  proof  that 
this  human  book  is  really  a  divine  insi^iration. 

We  are  sometimes  asked  to  define  inspiration.  Let 
it  then  be  at  once  conceded  that  it  is  easier  to  describe 
than  to  define  what  we  mean  by  that  word.  Even  as  to 
those  sudden  intuitions,  discoveries,  disclosures,  those 
revelations  of  the  mind  to  itself  as  to  the  way  in  which 
a  given  thing  can  best  be  done,  that  surprising  in- 
sight which  in  some  gifted  moments  enables  us  to  see 
what  was  dark  before,  that  quick  flash  of  sunlight  on 
the  perplexity  that  had  baifled  our  study  for  days  and 
weeks,  that  unravelling  and  clearing  of  a  taugled  skein 
of  things,  that  glad  heart-throb  when  an  idea  is  born,  a 
thought  struck  out,  an  invention  perfected — even  as  to 
these  insjiirations  of  human  genius,  it  is  not  easy  to 
offer  any  careful  and  exact  definition.  Tlie  great  in- 
ventors and  discoverers  and  poets  and  painters  and 
orators  cannot  tell  you  what  it  is  they  feel.  They  can 
only  give  us  some  very  general  account  of  the  state  of 
mind  in  which  they  are  when  seized  upon  with  the  idea 
which  they  have  given  to  the  world.  They  say  it  must 
be  felt  in  order  to  be  understood.  *     But  we  have  no  man 

'  Mozart  describing  the  state  of  mind  in  which  musical  com- 
position was  to  liim  most  lively  and  saccessf  ul  says  ;  "  Then,  the 
thoughts  come  streaming  in  upon  me  most  fluently,  whence  or 
how  is  more  than  I  can  tell.  Then  follows  the  clang  of  the  dif- 
ferent instruments  ;  then  if  not  diatnrhed,  the  thing  grows  greater, 
broader,  clearer.  I  see  the  whole  like  a  beautiful  picture.  This 
is  delight." 


IS  THE   BIBLE   INSPIRED  ?  69 

living  to-diiy  who  is  under  a  divine  inspiration  ;  the  in- 
spiration not  only  of  one's  own  genius,  but  of  a  divine 
guidance  for  the  communication  of  new  moral  truth  to 
the  race.  We  have  no  man  who  has  the  peculiar  con- 
sciousness of  speaking  "  the  words,  not  which  man's 
wisdom  teacheth  but  which  the  Holy  Ghost  teacheth." 
And  only  incidentally  did  those  who  once  were  thus  in- 
spired, tell  us  of  the  state ;  nor  do  they  inform  us  how 
they  knew  when  they  were  and  when  they  were  not 
under  the  influence  of  this  insj^iring  Spirit.  Evidently 
it  was  not  their  ordinary  and  normal  state  as  Christians. 
For  they  often  distinguish  between  the  sanctifying  and 
the  inspiring  influence.  But  if  tliey  do  not  define  they 
describe  ;  and  if  they  do  not  tell  us  specially  of  the 
state  itself,  they  tell  us  of  the  results  of  that  inspiration 
in  the  production  of  the  volume  which  we  call  the 
Bible. 

As  we  look  upon  these  pages,  we  see  that  there  must 
be  a  great  variety  in  the  forms  and  degrees  and  kinds  of 
inspiration.  The  inspiration  where  a  man  is  an  eye-wit- 
ness of  events  which  he  is  to  record  must  be  very  unlike 
that  needed  when  a  man  is  uttering  prophecy,  the  full 
meaning  of  which  it  may  or  may  not  be  needful  for  him 
to  comprehend.  And  yet  in  all  of  it  there  may  be 
needed  that  superintendence  which  preserves  from 
actual  error,  even  in  the  record  in  things  that  have 
fallen  under  the  direct  notice  of  the  narrator  himself. 
And  besides    the  evidence    furnished  in    the   volume 


70     A   YOUjSTG   man's   difficulties   with   niS   BIBLE. 

itself,  as  to  the  kind  and  degree  of  this  guidance,  we 
must  take  the  testimony  of  the  writers  of  a  boolv  which 
we  have  found  to  be  truthful,  with  reference  to  the 
fact  of  tlieir  inspiration.  They  claim,  and  their  work 
proves  it  as  well  as  their  words,  that  their  work  is  two- 
fold in  its  character.  It  is  human,  they  say.  And  they 
say,  just  as  distinctly,  that  it  is  the  work  of  God's  in- 
spiring spirit. 

Beginning,  then,  on  the  human  side,  in  our  descrij)- 
tion,  we  should  say  that  we  have  here  in  the  Bible  a 
book  written,  not  by  angels,  not  by  God,  but  by  men. 
Their  own  description  of  the  human  element  is  given  in 
the  words  of  one  of  them  as  he  speaks  of  his  work  and 
that  of  the  others.  It  is  this ;  "  Holy  men  spake  as 
they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  Notice  the  re- 
cognition of  the  human  element. 

"Holy  men  spake."  They  were  voluntary  agents, 
using  their  own  human  language.  But  they  *' spake  as 
moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost.'^ 

And  in  this  combination  of  a  human  element  and  a 
divine  element,  we  have  not  partly  the  one  and  partly 
the  other  ;  not  one  text  fallible  and  the  next  infallible. 
But  all  of  it  is  of  man,  and  all  of  it  is  of  God.  God 
penned  not  one  word.  Man  wrote  it.  Man  wrote  not 
one  word  by  himself  unwatched,  unassisted  of  God.  So 
that  it  is  both  man's  word  and  God's  word.  It  is  the 
work  of  Moses,  Isaiah,  John,  Paul,  and  the  rest  of  them. 
And  yet  at  the  same  time   it  is  God's  inspiration  of 


IS  THE  BIBLE  IN"SPIRED  ?  71 

man's  thouglit  as  lie  was  "  moved,"  and  of  man's  word 
as  he  ''spake." 

Or,  appi'oacliing  this  matter  from  the  divine  side,  as 
do  these  men  sometimes  in  their  descriptions,  we  hear 
them  say,  "  All  Scripture  is  given  by  iiisjnratioH  of 
God."  So  that  we  have  an  instance  in  whicli  God  takes 
up  frail  and  imperfect  men  and  human  language  in 
order  to  come  near  and  reveal  himself  in  human  litera- 
ture, even  as  he  has  done  in  human  nature  by  his  Son 
Jesus  Chi'ist. 

And  just  as  a  superior  overworks  and  absorbs  an  in- 
ferior power,  so  God  infuses  his  thought  into  men,  and 
secures  its  accurate  expression  by  them.  And  thus  they 
become  his  voluntary  or  his  involuntary,  instruments. 
When  they  are  bad  men,  as  in  tlie  case  of  Balaam,  the  in- 
spiration is  involuntary.  These  cases  are  few.  And 
when  they  occurred,  it  was  to  confront  and  overwhelm 
evil  prophets  and  evil  men.  But  the  Scriptures,  it  is 
claimed,  were  God's  inspiration  through  good  men  to 
teach  the  world  authoritatively  the  truth  it  needs  to  know. 
There  is  a  human  element ;  and  so  we  see  various  styles 
and  methods  of  Avriting.  But  there  is,  we  claim,  a 
divine  element,  and  this  overspreads  and  animates  the 
human  ;  the  stronger  using  the  weaker.  As  God  is  true, 
so  his  word  is  true.  It  is  without  admixture  of  error,  and 
is  thus  a  final  authority  in  faith,  in  doctrine,  in  duty  ;  and 
it  contains  all  about  religion  that  we  need  to  know  or 
can  know  on  earth.    "  The  word  of  the  Lord  is  perfect." 


72    A  TouNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

Two  men,  intimate  friends,  are  seated  together  at 
tlie  same  table.  One  of  tliem  will  write  a  narrative  of 
certain  events  on  which  he  has  a  considerable  degree  of 
knowledge.  It  is  necessary  that  the  narrative  should  be 
accurate.  The  first  shall  write  ;  but  the  second,  whose 
knowledge  is  full,  accurate,  perfect,  will  help  the  first 
man.  He  names  no  new  items  of  information.  But  he 
corrects  the  impressions  of  the  first  so  far  as  they  are  im- 
perfect. If  a  wrong  word  is  about  to  be  used  by  the 
first,  the  second  man  suggests  the  right  one.  If  the  pre- 
position to  will  convey  the  thought  to  be  expressed 
better  than  the  preposition  of,  he  suggests  that  word 
in  place  of  the  other.  He  writes  not  a  word  him- 
self ;  yet  on  the  other  hand  not  a  word  is  written  but  he 
weighs  its  meaning  and  indorses  or  corrects  it.  In  the 
narrative,  as  corrected  and  published  to  the  world,  you 
have  the  style  of  the  first  man,  his  peculiar  methods  of 
expression.  It  is  his  book.  But  it  has  also  all  the  ac- 
curacy, all  the  thoroughness,  all  the  inspiration  of  the 
second  man. 

Put  God's  Holy  Spirit  in  the  place  of  one  of  these 
men,  and  Matthew,  Mark  or  Luke,  in  the  place  of 
the  other,  and  you  have  the  very  case  before  us.  And 
the  result  is  a  human  book,  and  a  divine  inspiration,  a 
book  all  of  man,  and  also  a  book  all  of  God. 

Let  us  consider,  next,  some  of  the  popular  oljections 
to  the  divine  inspiration  of  the  Scri])tures. 
1     The    individualism    every    where  apparent  in  the 


IS   THE   BIBLE   INSPIRED?  73 

volume  lias  been  urged  as  antagonistic  to  its  claims. 
Paul  docs  not  write  like  John,  nor  David  like  Moses. 
And  tliis  fact  has  been  alleged  to  be  inconsistent  with 
a  divine  revelation.  To  which  it  is  enough  to  reply 
that  there  is  no  reason  why  God's  inspiration  through 
a  man  should  change  his  style  of  writing  any  more  than 
it  should  alter  the  features  of  his  face.  Indeed,  these 
peculiarities  are  fresh  proofs  of  the  divine  wisdom  in  the 
selection  of  fitting  instraments  to  do  a  given  work.  To 
know  men  is  kingly.  To  know  them  so  as  to  use  them, 
each  in  the  best  way,  is  j) roof  of  superior  genius.  A  wise 
general  employs  subordinates  according  to  their  gift. 
Grant  had  his  Sheridan  for  the  valley  of  the  She- 
nandoah, and  his  ^Sherman  for  the  march  from  At- 
lanta to  the  sea. 

And  Avhen,  in  his  providence,  God  has  a  work  to  be 
done,  he  has  always  a  man  to  do  it.  In  like  manner 
when  he  has  a  revelation  to  give  to  men  about  matters 
touching  eternal  salvation,  he  selects  not  weak  or  un- 
suitable men.  That  would  be  to  ignore  his  own  infisnite 
wisdom.  But  he  has  a  Paul  to  write  the  epistle  to  the 
Eomans,  and  a  David  to  sing  the  songs  of  holy  experi- 
ence, and  a  Luke,  the  physician,  to  chronicle  the  life  of 
Jesus,  and  a  John  to  reason  not  through  the  brain  like 
Paul,  but  to  enwrap  all  truth  in  the  roseate  hues  of  his 
own  loving  heart.  God  makes  no  mistakes.  Paul  never 
has  John's  work  to  do.  The  inspiring  spirit  adapts 
means  to  ends. 
4 


74     A  YOUNG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

Another  objection  is  drawn  from  the  scientific  allu- 
sions of  the  Bible.  "  A  perfect  volume,"  it  is  said, 
"should  be  perfect  in  its  science."  Yes;  we  reply, 
if  it  attempts  to  teach  exact  science.  But  the  Bible 
makes  no  such  claim.  It  is  a  religious  book  ;  re- 
cording facts  from  a  religious  point  of  view,  and 
teaching  men  about  God  and  duty.  When  it  alludes 
to  science,  it  adopts  the  scientific  language  of  its 
various  eras.  No  other  course  was  possible  for  such  a 
volume.  Had  it  used  the  terminology,  had  it  declared 
the  discoveries  of  the  centuries  since  it  was  written, 
the  book  would  have  been  loudly  denounced  in  all 
former  centuries  as  false.  A  volume  claiming  to  be  five 
hundred  years  old  that  described  the  modern  steam 
engine  and  the  telegraph  would  be  likely  to  awaken  not 
only  suspicion  but  derision.  Indeed,  had  these  scientific 
truths  been  here  stated,  the  fair  inference  would  have 
been  that  the  Bible  was  a  forgery.  Then,  too,  if  it  had 
used  the  words  of  exact  science,  the  world  would  in 
many  things  have  utterly  failed  to  understand  it.  And 
as  to  "exact  scientific  accuracy,"  about  which  so  much 
is  said,  who  will  pretend  that  we  have  come  to  the 
era  of  perfect  science  ?  We  are,  in  our  turn,  to  be 
laughed  at  a  thousand  years  hence,  for  our  mistakes  in 
astronomy,  in  geology,  in  cliemistry  and  in  all  tlie  other 
sciences.  Perhaps  allusions  to  exact  science,  as  it  is  to 
be  in  some  coming  time,  would  be  riddles  to  us. 

"But  does  the  Bible  teach  scientific  error"  asks 


IS  THE  BIBLE  INSPIEED  ?  75 

one.  No  ;  it  teaches  nothing  about  science.'  It  names 
the  facts  of  the  physical  world  and  the  mental  world 
as  illustrations  of  moral  truth.  To-day  we  find,  in  the 
most  careful  writers  e\en  upon  astronomy,  allusions  to 
the  ''rising  and  the  setting"  of  the  sun  ;  to  "the  ends 
of  the  earth  ;"  and  to  "the  revolution  of  the  heavens." 
To  deny  the  accuracy  of  such  writers  because  they  em- 
ploy the  popular  phraseology  of  their  times  is  absurd. 
A  revelation  from  God  in  our  human  language  must 
use  the  modes  of  speech,  scientific,  literary,  or  even  reli- 
gious, which  men  commonly  employ  at  the  time  when 
its  writers  are  living.  It  can  do  nothing  else.  The 
attempt  to  do  otlierwise  would  awaken  suspicion.  And 
no  course  can  be  more  unfair  than  to  demand  that  a  rev- 
elation from  God  shall  tally  with  "the  latest  form  of 
science,"  whatever   that  phrase  may  mean.     For  who 

*  What  tlie  writer  would  assert  is,  that  science,  in  its  classified 
and  arranged  form,  is  not  distinctively  taught.  There  are  Biblical 
facts  of  Cosmogony,  of  Geography,  and  of  Ethnology.  The  Bible 
goes  not  out  of  its  way  to  state  them.  Some  of  our  Christian 
scientists  have  been  at  great  pains  to  show  that  when  it  is  said, 
"  He  hangeth  the  earth  upon  nothing,"  there  is  the  scientific 
statement  of  a  fact ;  similarly  some  have  dealt  with  the  Mosaic 
account,  which  in  advance  of  modern  science,  they  say,  has  put 
the  light  before  the  sun,  the  plant  before  the  seed,  the  period  of 
fishes  and  plants  before  man.  It  is  not  intended,  in  the  above,  to 
assert  that  when  the  Bible  teaches  &fact,  scientific,  geographical, 
or  ethnological,  it  is  of  no  authority.  Far  from  that.  But  as 
against  objections,  it  is  claimed  that,  in  the  mode  of  statement,  its 
usual  language  is  not  that  of  scientific  theory,  deduction,  and 
classification.  "Science,"  says  Webster,  "  is  a  collection  of  gen- 
eral principles  or  truths  arranged  in  systematic  order." 


76    A  YOUHG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

shall  tell  US  which  of  the  conflicting  theories  of  eminent 
geologists  is  to  be  taken  as  the  standard  on  any  qnestion 
they  have  raised ;  say,  if  you  will,  on  the  question  of 
the  age  of  the  earth.  They  differ  from  each  other  by 
tens  of  thousands  of  years.  But  if  they  agreed  in  plac- 
ing the  age  of  the  earth  at  any  vastly  distant  period  of 
the  past,  there  would  be  no  conflict  with  the  Mosaic 
story.  For  interpreters  there  have  been,  even  from  the 
second  century,  who  have  stoutly  insisted  that  the  open- 
ing verses  of  Genesis  describe  an  indefinite  past  age  in 
which  God  created  the  matter  out  of  which  he  subse- 
quently shaped  the  earth,  as  recorded  in  the  succeeding 
verses  of  the  sacred  story.  And  not  only  are  geologists 
divided  among  themselves,  but  they  are  in  conflict  with 
leading  naturalists  like  Agassiz,  and  especially  with 
leading  astronomers,  like  Thompson,  who  deny  the  im- 
mense age  of  the  earth  which  is  claimed  by  the  theories 
of  leading  geologists.  The  "  latest  phase  of  science," 
is  a  difficult  thing  to  be  ascertained ;  for  these  phases 
chase  one  another  like  cloud-shadows  across  a  mountain- 
side, so  that  it  requires  a  nimble  eye  to  keep  even  some 
general  knowledge  of  them  as  they  come  and  go. '     It 

'  Lamark  held  to  spontaneous  generation.  The  author  of  the 
book  '-Vestiges  of  Creation,"  so  celebrated  thirty  years  ago  but 
utterly  fallen  out  of  the  popular  notice  to-day,  took  even  more 
extreme  views.  Darwin  denounces  both.  Huxley  is  at  swords' 
point  with  Darwin  on  the  question  of  a  Creator  who  breathed  life 
•at  first  into  one  or  more  beings.  Wallace  insists  that  Darwin's 
great  doctrine  of  natural  selection  is  not  proven  ;  and  if  proven 
would  be  entirely  inadequate  to  account  for  the  origin  of  man. 


IS  THE   BIBLE   IKSPIKED  ?  77 

may  be  that  the  Darwinian  theory  of  the  ''  survival  of  the 
fittest,"  finds  its  real  application  when  applied  to  the 
multitudinous  theories  of  scientists.  And  yet  all  truth 
that  is  really  gained,  from  whatever  source,  is  gladly  wel- 
comed by  intelligent  believers  in  the  Scriptures.  For 
they  hold  that  the  facts  of  the  world  of  God  and  of  the 
word  of  God  will  stand.  Science  is  the  name  Ave  give  to 
the  interpretation  of  the  one  ;  theology  is  the  name  we 
give  to  the  interpretation  of  the  other.  Neither  science 
nor  theology  can  add  a  fact  or  change  a  fact.  There 
are  the  facts  in  the  world  and  in  the  word.  "VVe  simijly 
classify,  and,  as  best  we  can,  explain  them.  They  often 
are  mutually  exj)lanatory  ;  for  they  show  in  many  things 
that  they  have  a  common  origin  in  the  mind  and  heart 
of  God.  When  after  the  clash  of  theories,  the  truth  has 
obtained  the  victory,  when  that  has  survived  which  was 
not  always  the  most  confident  and'  most  noisy  in  its 
claims,  it  has  always  been  found  hitherto  that  science 
and  religion,  the  interpreters  of  God's  world,  and  God's 
word  were  not  aliens  but  friends. 

We  can  afford  to  wait  when  adverse  theories  rise 
with  eminent  men  as  their  defenders.  For  the  history 
of  science,  while  it  has  its  living  achievements,  is  also  a 
strand  sown  thick  with  opinions  once  earnestly  defended 
and  honestly  believed,  but  now  regarded  not   only,  as 

Owen  contends  for  the  physical  unity  of  the  race,  and  Agassiz, 
while  granting  the  moral  unity  of  the  race,  contends  for  different 
pairs  in  different  geographical  centres. 


78      A   YOUNG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

untrue  but  absurd.  The  truth  about  a  created  nature 
and  the  truth  about  an  inspired  Bible  will  survive  ;  and 
all  the  record  of  the  past  warrants  the  belief  that  these 
truths  will  be  found  evermore  in  essential  agreement.' 

Another  objection  to  the  insi^iration  of  the  Scriptures 
is  drawn  from  the  history  of  our  usually  received  sacred 
books.  It  has  been  alleged,  that  the  selection  of  these 
books  was  arbitrary  ;  that  uninspired  ones  may  have 
been  included  and  inspired  ones  admitted  ;  that  what 
is  called  the  "  Canon  of  Scripture,"  was  made  by  men, 
their  taste  and  judgment  deciding  what  to  accept  and 
Avhat  to  reject  from  a  multitude  of  writings  all  profess- 
ing to  be  inspired. 

The  reference  is  to  the  fact  that  about  two  hundred 
years  after  the  death  of  Christ,  a  Council  or  Convention 
of  churches  made  public  declaration  to  the  world  as  to 
what  books  had  been  believed  from  the  first  to  be 
genuine  Scriptures.  For  there  Avere  forgeries  in  that 
age.  Heretics,  unable  to  introduce  new  verses  into  the 
well  known  documents,  devised  new  Gospels  ;  and  here 
and  there  a  man  had  been  for  a  time  deceived.  But 
these  apocryphal  Gospels  have  come  down  to  us.     And 

'  The  grand  old  book  of  God  still  stands,  and  this  old  earth 
the  more  its  leaves  are  turned  over  and  pondered  the  more  it  will 
sustain  and  illustrate  the  sacred  word. — Dana. 

All  human  discoveries  seem  to  be  made  only  for  the  purpose 
of  confirming  the  sacred  Scriptures. — IIer.schel. 

In  my  investigations  of  natural  phenomena,  when  I  can  meet 
any  thing  in  the  Bible,  it  afEords  me  a  firm  platform  on  which  to 
etand. — Maury. 


IS  THE   BIBLE   INSPIRED  ?  79 

any  man  wlio  knows  our  four  Gospels  and  then  com- 
pares these  apocryphal  books  with  them,  will  not  wonder 
an  instant  at  the  rejection  of  writings  full  of  puerilities 
and  absurdities — writings  that  carry,  by  their  allusions 
to  manners  and  customs  absolutely  unknown  in  the  days 
of  Christ,  their  own  refutation  ;  writings  the  whole  tone 
of  which  is  utterly  unlike  that  of  the  New  Testament. 
And  this  is  so  evident  that  if  these  rejected  books  are 
true,  our  Gospels  are  false,  and  if  ours  are  true  these 
are  an  imposture.  The  inventors  of  these  apocryphal 
gospels  never  designed  them  as  substitutes,  but  only  as 
additional  gospels.  But  they  go  not  together ;  ''  the 
new  agree  til  not  with  the  old." 

It  is  customary  for  some  chnrch  creeds  to  make 
declaration  as  to  the  books  they  hold  to  be  inspired. 
Churches  did  the  same  in  the  second  century.  This  is  done 
to-day  where  Komanism  prevails,  to  show  that  Protestants 
do  not  regard  the  Jewish  books  called  the  "  Apocrypha," 
as  having  divine  inspiration.  A  church  of  Christians 
at  Salt  Lake  City  would  be  very  likely  to  make  a  state- 
ment of  their  belief  in  this  matter,  so  that  none  should 
suspect  them  of  believing  in  the  pretended  revelations 
of  Joseph  Smith.  But  he  who  should  assert  that  such 
a  declaration,  made  to-day,  was  an  arbitrary  or  acciden- 
tal settlement  of  a  question  that  was  not  settled  as  much 
before,  would  hardly  be  more  wide  of  the  truth  than 
those  who  insist  that  a  similar  declaration  in  the  second 
century  was  accidental  and  arbitrary ;  and  that  it  was 


80      A   YOUNG   MAK'S   DIFFICULTIES   WITn   IIIS   BIBLE. 

tlien,  for  the  first  time,  claimed  that  these  books  were 
inspired.  God's  people  are  intrusted  with  his  Word, 
and  it  is  their  duty  to  make  statements  to  the  world  of 
their  belief.  So  did  the  early  churches  ;  so  do  those  of 
to-day. 

The  alleged  discrepancies  of  the  Scriptures  have  been 
urged  as  an  objection  to  its  inspiration.  It  is  admitted, 
nay  claimed,  that  there  have  been  and  still  are  things  in 
the  Scriptures  "  hard  to  be  understood."  But  their 
number  is  rapidly  diminishing.  Under  discoveries  in 
sacred  geography,  under  explorations  in  ruins  where 
long  buried  inscriptions  give  the  missing  facts  that  have 
explained  hundreds  of  apparent  discrepancies  and  have 
thrown  light  on  verses  of  the  Bible  that  seemed  almost 
contradictory,  under  researches  in  natural  science  and 
ancient  history,  the  things  once  thought  to  be  stones 
of  stumbling  are  many  of  them  among  tlie  strongest 
confirmations  of  the  truth  of  Holy  Writ.  And  when 
larger  investigations  have  been  had,  other  difficulties 
without  doubt,  will  vanish,  and  in  their  place  shall 
stand  new  evidences. 

And  when  it  is  remembered  that  these  books  of  the 
Bible  were  written  by  men  who  lived  in  lands  widely 
distant  from  each  other,  in  different  ages,  in  different 
languages  and  dialects,  in  centuries  in  which  there  were 
different  ways  of  computing  time  and  also  different 
eras  from  which  to  date  the  years,  in  which  periods 
of  time  of  the  same  name  were  of  different  lengths,  and 


IS   THE   BIBLE   INSPIKED  ?  81 

even  days  were  differently  arranged  as  to  tlieir  hours, 
the  only  wonder  is  that  we  do  not  find  more  difficulties 
of  this  kind — difficulties  that  do  not  seriously  impair 
the  confidence  of  any  candid  man  in  the  integrity  of 
religious  teaching  of  the  Bible.  These  writers  in  giving 
lists  of  families,  quoted  from  public  official  documents, 
and  any  error  in  official  tables  that  did  not  affect  their 
immediate  purpose  it  was  not  theirs  to  examine  and  ex- 
pose ;  they  used  here  Jewish  and  there  Eoman  methods 
of  computation  ;  and  probably,  sometimes,  Assyrian  and 
even  Grecian  methods.  The  inspired  Ezra  reedited 
Moses,  and  gave,  exactly  as  is  done  in  modern  works,  a 
word  or  two  as  to  the  author's  death.  Different  writers, 
living  years  apart,  give  in  different  words,  and  from 
different  points  of  dating,  the  facts  of  Jewish  history. 
They  copy  public  documents  in  one  case  or  rely  upon 
personal  memory  in  another,  with,  exactly  such  small 
disagreements  as  might  be  expected.  The  differences 
touch  nothing  vital ;  and  all  of  them  may  be  yet  ex- 
l^lained  by  our  fuller  knowledge,  as  has  been  the  case 
with  other  difficulties  in  the  past. 

Our  ignorance  must  not  be  set  down  as  against  the 
Bible  itself.  In  nothing  perhaps  is  our  ignorance  so 
great  as  in  this  matter  of  chronology.'     And  we  have 

'  "  Clironoloo^y  is  peculiarly  difficult  when  we  have  to  do  with 
oriental  modes  of  computation  which  are  essentially  different 
from  ours." — J.  B.  Thompson.  Hebrew  and  Arabic  permit  one  to 
write  first  the  units  and  then  the  tens  and  then  the  hundreds,  or 
to  reverse  the  order,  and  write  the  highest  first.  Hence  con- 
4.* 


82      A  YOUNG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE, 

exactly  the  same  trouble  in  making  out  the  figures  of 
Josephus  and  other  ancient  authors  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Bible.  The  ease  with  which  mistakes  may  be  made 
when,  as  in  all  the  older  records  of  the  race,  letters  are 
used  for  numerals,  is  acknowledged  by  every  scholar. 
That  such  errors  in  matters  not  vital  may  have  crept  in, 
would  not  be  denied  by  many  fast  friends  of  revelation. 
And  yet  others  after  the  most  careful  study  of  years,  find 
no  need  of  admitting  that  there  are  such  errors.  In  either 
case  they  never  affect  the  reality  of  Christian  fact  or  the 
substance  of  Christian  doctrine.  For  the  truth,  which, 
as  its  friends  claim,  is  here  given,  is  not  the  truth  of  in- 
spired science  as  of  Geology  or  Astronomy  or  Chemistry. 
It  is  moral  truth  as  supported  by  the  great  historical 
facts  of  the  dispensations  which  culminated  in  the 
advent  of  Jesus  Christ.  Nor  do  the  friends  of  the 
Bible  claim  any  miracle  in  its  preservation  but  only  such 
providential  care  that  the  books  shall  not  become  woi'th- 
less  for  the  purposes  for  which  they  were  given.  For 
we  may  be  certain  that  the  God  who  guides  the  fall  of 
the  sparrow  would  not  allow  an  inspired  book  which 
was  of  any  use  to  the  world  to-day,  to  be  lost.  For  this 
age  needs,  as  does  each  age,  a  directory  reliable  and  sure  ; 

fusion  and  the  liability  to  terrible  over-statements  in  translation. 
The  case  in  Samuel  is  an  illustration,  where  "  fifty  thousand 
three  score  and  ten  men,"  are  mentioned.  Literally  it  is 
'  "  seventy  "  and  "  fifties"  and  "  a  thousand," — which  may  mean 
either  as  in  our  version,  or  it  may  mean  one  thousand  one  hundred 
and  seventy. 


IS   THE   BIBLE   INSPIKED  ?  83 

a  volume  without  admixture  of  error  in  its  statements 
of  moral  fact  and  human  duty. 

In  short,  all  the  objections  ever  urged  have  one 
defect.  They  forget  that  the  book  is  professedly  human. 
They  forget  that  the  presence  of  the  human  element,  so 
far  from  being  an  objection,  is  the  vei*y  thing  for  which 
the  friends  of  the  Bible  contend.  No  matter  if  Paul 
uses  bad  grammar,  if  Jesus  speaks  the  impure  Aramaic 
of  his  time,  if  Matthew  writes  with  Hebrew  idioms  ;  no 
matter  if  Luke  uses  round  numbers  rather  than  exact 
figures.  Tliese  men  are  men  ;  and  it  is  men  for  whom 
we  claim  inspiration.  But  they  are  men  used  of  God  as 
the  stronger  uses  the  weaker  ;  God's  inspiration  preserv- 
ing them  from  error  when  they  utter  religious  truth. 
Did  you  ever  stand  beside  the  pilot  of  a  noble  ship  as 
she  bounded  over  tlie  billows  a  thing  of  life  ?  Did 
you  ever  watch  his  eye  as  it  glanced  at  the  compass,  then 
up  at  the  sails,  then  over  the  side  as  he  saw  the  coming 
wave  ?  If  every  thing  goes  right  he  stands  motionless. 
But  if  he  sees  that  a  flaw  of  the  freshening  wind  is 
about  to  change  his  vessel's  prow  but  a  trifle  from  the 
true  course,  how  quickly  he  turns  his  wheel  to  meet  the 
new  deflecting  force.  Or  if  a  broad  wave,  gathering  on 
her  quarter,  is  about  to  strike  his  ship  from  the  line  of 
her  j)rogress,  swiftly  he  reverses  his  wheel.  And  thus 
amid  all  the  disturbing  influences  of  wind  and  wave,  the 
pilot,  with  hand  on  the  helm,  guides  the  ship  surely  and 
safely  in  her  unchanged  path.     So  God  guides  the  men 


84    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible, 

tlirougli  Avliom  he  will  make  known  his  will.  The 
helm  governs  the  ship.  God  is  the  helmsman,  and 
this  is  the  bark.  Amid  all  human  imperfections,  amid 
the  veering  of  winds  and  the  tossing  of  the  Avaves,  the 
helmsman  never  steers  wildly,  never  loses  his  control, 
never  is  deflected  from  his  course.  Man's  book,  we 
most  fully  believe,  has  God's  inspiration. 

There  is  proof  that  this  volume  is  the  inspired  word 
of  God. 

1.  It  is  reasonahle  to  believe  that  God  will  give  some- 
where an  inspired  volume.  No  one  has  any  too  much 
light  about  religion.  The  wisest  man,  the  loftiest  soul 
among  the  Greeks  declared  that  "the  groat  want  of 
the  race  is  a  book  inspired  of  God."  See  the  failure 
of  men  without  it.  They  are  like  the  dove  sent  from 
the  ark,  unable  to  find  rest  for  the  weary  feet.  Some 
tell  us  that  reason  is  enough  without  revelation.  But 
the  keenest  and  most  philosophical  mind  of  the  ancient 
time,  the  Greek  mind,  Avas  busy  at  the  problem  of  reli- 
gion for  centuries.  And  the  result  of  the  study  of  the 
finest,  clearest,  most  penetrative  thought  of  the  race  is 
seen  every  where  else.  In  literature,  in  the  plastic  arts, 
in  oratory,  that  mind  leads  still  the  world.  But  how 
about  its  religion  ?  What  is  the  result  here  ?  Just  this  ; 
that  the  traveller  seated  on  one  of  the  prostrate  columns 
of  the  temple  of  Jupiter  Olympus  at  Athens,  is 
compelled  to  remember  that  "  Jupiter,  king  of  the 
Gods,"  has  not  a  worshiper  on  earth  to-day  ! 


IS   THE   BIBLE   IKSPIRED  ?  85 

Is  reason  then  of  no  avail  ?  Very  far  from  that. 
"We  only  say  it  is  no  substitute  for  revelation.  It 
teaches  just  this  ;  the  need,  and  so  the  probable  supply 
of  the  great  want  of  our  race,  viz.,  a  revelation  of  God 
in  human  literature.  It  is  reasonable  to  believe  that 
God  has  revealed  his  will  and  our  duty  somewhere 
in  the  course  of  human  thought.  He  has  revealed  him- 
self in  other-ways.  Why  not  here,  in  the  line  of  human 
literature  ;  and  as  a  man  discloses  his  thought  in  a  book, 
why  not  God  use  the  same  simple  and  obvious  and  ex- 
pected method  in  revealing  his  thought  unto  the  race  ? 
Indeed  such  a  book  is  a  necessity  for  us  as  much  as  light 
for  the  eye,  and  air  for  the  lungs.  God  made  the  want 
in  us,  and  God  has  made  the  supply.  Otherwise  we 
are  left  to  men's  conflicting  guesses,  and  inevitable 
weaknesses,  and  perpetual  mistakes  in  matters  most 
vital  to  our  souls'  interests.  There  are  things  we  need 
to  know,  and  which  we  never  can  know  unless  God  tells 
us  ;  for  only  God  can  know  them  of  himself. 

And  if  God  must  reveal  himself  in  literature  we  may 
expect  it  in  inspired  documents  concerning  his  Son 
Jesus  Christ.  And  if  this  Bible  is  not  that  revelation, 
then  somewhere  in  connection  with  the  record  of  these 
facts  it  must  be  found.  There  is  no  competitor.  It  is 
this  or  none.  There  is  not  even  the  resemblance  of  a 
claim  anywhere  else.  Even  Mahomet  claimed  no  reve- 
lation directly  from  God.  It  was  through  the  angel 
Gabriel  that  his  pretended  inspiration  came.     Outside 


] 


8G    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible, 

tliis  Bible  I  do  not  know  a  book  on  earth  claiming 
diviiie  inspiration. 

The  intuitions  of  our  hearts  teach  us  this  need  and 
also  prepare  us  to  expect  that  somewhere  there  is  a  rev- 
elation from  God  about  religious  truth.  Some  have 
said  a  man's  own  intuition  or  spiritual  insight  is  enough. 
But  how  is  this  ?  Theodore  Parker's  insight  affirms 
"man  is  immortal."  But  Mr.  Newman,  over  the  sea, 
declares  that  his  consciousness  says  nothing  about  it. 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  "  thinks  we  cannot  know  any- 
thing by  our  consciousness,  insight,  or  in  any  other  way 
about  God,  whether  there  is  or  is  not  such  a  being  ; " 
while  Mr.  Parker  thinks  that  "  we  are  all  directly  con- 
scious of  God." 

The  truth  is  that,  left  alone  to  their  own  conscious- 
ness or  insight,  men  can  never  come  to  an  agreement 
as  to  the  beliefs  at  the  basis  of  religion.  Their  diver- 
gences on  first  truths  show  the  need  of  a  revelation 
from  God  to  take  us  up  just  where  our  feeble  intuitions 
fail,  and  to  carry  us  on  and  out  of  the  twilight  into 
the  perfect  day. 

God  is.  But  who  save  he  himself  can  tell  us  what 
he  is  ?  For  who  but  he  knows  ?  Man  is  immortal. 
But  where,  and  in  doing  what  is  that  immortality  to  be 
passed  ?  Who  can  tell  save  God  ?  For  none  but  he, 
with  omniscient  eye,  can  see  the  interminable  future. 
Is  there  a  heaven  and  a  hell  ?  and  are  they  eternal  ? 
God  must  tell  us.     What  will  men  do  in  eternity  ?  God 


IS  THE   BIBLE  INSPIRED  ?  87 

S 

only  can  see  and  know  as  of  himself.  We  know  only  as 
he  tells  us.  We  are  sinners.  It  is  the  consciousness  of 
the  race.  Can  sin  be  forgiven  ?  God  only  knows  on 
what  terms  he  will  forgive  ?  We  know  from  him,  and 
if  he  has  told  us  ;  not  otherwise.  The  soul  of  man  can 
never  rest  except  in  some  authoritative  expression  of 
God.  Our  great  soul-want  is  for  something  more  certain 
than  guesses  about  religion,  or  the  differing  conclusions 
of  reason,  or  the  partial  intuitions  of  our  hearts.  We 
need  something  reliable,  and  sure  ;  we  need  "the  truth 
without  any  admixture  of  error."  All  the  vast  systems 
of  ancient  belief  proclaim  this  want ;  all  the  struggling 
of  men's  souls  to  find  a  resting  place  declares  it.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  unmistakable  wants  of  the  race.  We 
claim  that  God  has  undertaken  to  supply  this  want. 
And  will  he  be  likely  to  do  it  by  an  imperfect  book  ? 
Will  he  give  us  a  revelation  with  error  in  it  when  the 
only  purpose  of  giving  it  at  all  is  to  save  us  fi'om  error  ? 
We  can  err  and  guess  without  a  Bible.  What  we  need 
is  not  the  mere  afflatus  of  the  poet  or  the  dream  of  the 
enthusiast ;  but  a  book  of  certainty  with  the  divine 
stamp  upon  it. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  every  man  has  a  final 
authority  in  this  matter  of  religion  ;  if  not  the  Bible,  it 
is  something  else.  The  Romanist  declares  that  the 
Bible  alone  is  not  enough  ;  it  mnst  be  interpreted  by 
authority  of  the  church — a  company  of  men.  The 
modern  sceptic  seeks  his  authority  in  his  own  reason. 


88      A  YOUKG  MAK'S  DIFFICULTIES  WITS   HIS   BIBLE. 

He  says  "  This  or  that  thing  in  the  Bible  is  unreason- 
able to  me ;  I  cannot  believe  it.  This  fact,  plainly,  is 
impossible  ;  that  doctrine  goes  against  my  convictions." 
And  so  he  sets  his  own  private  authority  higher  than 
God's  word.  But  mark  it ;  Sceptic  and  Romanist  agree 
in  trusting  human  authority  ;  one  trusts  man,  the  in- 
dividual ;  the  other  trusts  men,  the  church.  But  both 
have  sometliing  they  call  authority,  though  it  is  only 
human  authority.  For  there  must  be  some  final  ground 
for  rest.     We  take  God.     They  take  men. 

We  claim  that  there  is  an  absolute  need  of  divine 
authority,  if  men  are  to  know  about  religion.  We  want 
a  revelation  from  God  ; — inspired  too,  in  every  part,  by 
God's  Spirit.  For  a  book  sometimes  true,  sometimes 
false  is  worse  than  none  ;  just  as  a  guide  sometimes 
trustworthy  and  sometimes  treacherous  is  more  danger- 
ous than  no  guide  at  all. 

Again  the  early  Christians  received  these  books  as 
inspired.  We  have  the  writings  of  persons  who  con- 
versed with  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke  and  John.  And 
these  uninspired  but  honest  men,  always  quote  our  sacred 
books  with  marks  of  respect ;  putting  a  wide  difference 
between  the^e  and  all  other  books.  These  early  Christian 
writers,  call  them  the  "Divine Scriptures,"  "  Scriptures 
of  the  Lord,"  "  Divinely  inspired  Scriptures,"  "  Sacred 
Books,"  *' The  Ancient  and  New  Oracles,"  '^Gospels," 
"Divine  Oracles,"  "Holy  Scriptures."  Surely  these 
names  are  significant.     Moreover  they  quote  not  from 


IS  THE   BIBLE   INSPIRED  ?  89 

general  tradition  but  from  these  books  when  they  wish 
to  state  the  facts  and  the  doctrines  of  religion  ;  quoting 
them  as  final  authority.  So  frequently  did  they  quote 
the  New  Testament  that  scholars  have  said  that  the 
whole  volume  could  be  collected  from  the  citations  in 
the  writers  of  the  few  earlier  centuries. 

Again  ;  the  Book  claims  insjiiration.  A  former 
chapter  has  been  devoted  to  the  question  of  the  general 
truthfulness  of  the  Bible.  In  the  book  itself  wo  find 
that  God  promises  divine  guidance.  He  said  to  Moses  "  I 
will  be  with  thy  mouth."  The  j^rophets  were  to  speak, 
''  in  the  name  of  the  Lord."  And  these  prophets  them- 
selves claimed  this  inspiration.  *'  Hear  the  word  of  the 
Lord."  "The  Lord  hath  spoken."  ''Thus  saith  the 
Lord,"  is  their  usual  formula.  Moreover  our  Lord  and 
his  apostles  indorsed  the  Old  Testament.  "  Search  the 
Scriptures,"  said  Jesus.  And  he  was  continually  saying 
"  as  it  is  written,"  and  "  that  it  might  be  fulfilled."  It 
is  said,  "All  Scripture  is  given  by  inspiration  of  God." 
"  Holy  men  of  God  spake  as  they  were  moved  by  the 
Holy  Spirit."  If  it  is  possible  by  any  words  to  enter 
the  claim  of  inspiration  from  heaven  it  is  done  in  these 
declarations.  Nor  is  this  all.  Jesus  promised  to  inspire 
his  disciples.  He  promised  the  Holy  Spirit,  who  should 
"  bring  all  things  to  their  remembrance  whatsoever 
he  had  said,  and  should  also  guide  them  into  all  truth." 
Can  any  thing  be  more  decisive  than  such  a  promise  ? 
If   then  we  have  not  an  inspired  volume,  containing 


90      A   YOUNG    man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

"  all  truth,"  Jesus  spoke  not  truthfully,  or  his  biog- 
raphers have  misrepresented  him.  His  disciples,  after 
his  death,  claimed  this  jiromised  guidance.  Says  one 
of  them,  "  ye  received  the  word  of  God  which  ye  heard 
of  us,  not  as  the  word  of  man,  but  as  it  is  in  truth  the 
word  of  God."  How  sharp  the  distinction  made  by 
the  Apostolic  pen  between  words  which  possess  only 
human  authority,  and  those  which  have  also  that  of 
God  !  And  this  is  only  a  siugle  instance  out  of  the 
multitude  of  similar  claims. 

Something  must  be  done  with  such  claims.  They 
are  too  frequent,  and  too  broad  to  be  ignored.  They 
occur  continually  in  the  Bible.  They  are  either  quietly 
assumed  or  expressly  declared  in  the  whole  volume. 
Open  the  Epistles  any  where  you  please.  Hear  the 
writers  announce  the  most  momentous  truths.  Do  they 
reason  as  with  human  logic  ?  Do  they  offer  to  prove 
them  as  do  ordinary  writers  ?  On  the  contrary,  they 
generally  announce  them  in  a  way  which  shows  insuffer- 
able arrogance  if  they  are  not  inspired  ;  but  which  is 
just  what  we  should  expect  if  their  authority  was  the 
diyine  guidance  they  claim.  And  thus  it  comes  to  be 
true  that  these  immense  claims  are  either  very  arrogant 
and  wicked,  and  I  had  almost  said,  blasphemous  ;  or  else 
they  are  rightful  and  just,  and  demand  reverence  as 
coming  fi'om  heaven.  Very  bad  men,  and  very 
wretched  enthusiasts  were  these  writers  on  the  one 
liand  ;  or  else  on  the  other  they  were  good,  honest,  and 


IS   THE   BIBLE   INSPIRED  ?  91 

righteous  men  ; — men  who  were  imperfect  in  themselves, 
but,  as  they  claim,  infallible  when,  under  God's  inspira- 
tion, they  were  teaching  religious  truth.  In  this  claim 
of  inspiration  they  were  outrageous  liars,  whose  preten- 
sions should  move  our  ridicule  if  not  our  indignation, 
or  else  they  were  true  men,  "chosen  of  God,"  to  speak 
"as  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  Scepticism  in  our 
day  compliments  the  Bible  as  an  excellent  book  Avith 
many  valuable  things  in  it ;  but  hesitates  to  allow  it  to 
be  inspired  of  God  and  an  infallible  guide.  We  rejoice 
that  this  ground  has  been  taken.  It  is  a  slippery 
ground.  No  man  can  stand  long  upon  it.  For  the 
Bible  claims  to  be  inspired.  That  claim  is  true  or  false. 
If  false,  can  we  trust  any  thing  in  the  book  ?  If  false, 
this  is  a  most  prodigious  falsehood.  A  little  error  in  a 
man's  words  may  not  vitiate  the  main  sentiment  even 
when  it  awakes  a  degree  of  suspicion.  But  if  the  error 
be  of  large  import,  and  lie  at  the  very  basis  of  the  whole 
statement  it  is  far  otherwise.  Now  here  is  a  claim  con- 
tinually made  in  the  Bible,  and  a  most  important  claim, 
nay,  the  most  important  of  all  its  claims.  If  false,  the 
whole  book  is  radically  false  ;  if  true  it  is  "  the  word  of 
God."  There  is  no  middle  ground.  It  insists  not  that 
it  is  simply  a  very  good  book,  with  excellent  sentiments, 
not  that  it  is,  like  any  production  of  good  men,  of 
merely  human  authority.  It  disclaims  this  in  claiming 
to  be  very  much  more. 

We  believe   the  volume  is  true.     We  accept  it  as 


93    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  eible. 

written  by  man,  but  written  under  divine  guidance. 
Tliey  who  have  received  it  "not  as  the  word  of  man 
but  as  it  is  in  truth  the  word  of  God,"  have  felt  the 
more  sure  of  its  inspiration  as  they  have  studied  it,  and 
have  yielded  their  hearts  and  lives  to  the  control  of  the 
facts  and  doctrines.  It  has  done  them  good  to  take  it 
as  an  inspired  book.  They  make  it  their  final  authority. 
"  Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  is  the  basis  of  their  confidence 
in  any  religious  belief. 

And  there  is  one  thing  about  this  book,  by  which, 
over  and  above  all  our  reasonings,  we  may  settle  the 
whole  matter  of  its  truth  or  falsehood.  AVe  may  use 
the  Baconian  method  with  it — the  method  of  experi- 
ment and  trial,  and  then  of  inference  as  the  result  of 
our  experimental  method.  "If  any  man  will  do  his 
will,"  said  Jesus,  "he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine." 
This  is  perfectly  fair.  We  are  not  asked  to  do  things 
evil  that  good  may  come  ;  but  only  to  do  Avhat  is  obvi- 
ously right ;  to  begin  Avith  the  nearest  duty  ;  to  practice 
at  once  on  precepts  that  commend  themselves.  The 
book  asks  you  to  ti^y  it.  "  Come  and  see,"  its  graiid 
message.  Here  is  a  personal  test  that  a  man  may  make 
for  himself.  As  far  as  it  commends  itself,  obey  it.  It 
bids  you  pray  for  wisdom.  Do  it  as  you  would  be  a  fair 
minded  man  and  prove  yourself  desirous  of  knowing  the 
truth.  Enough  has  been  shown  in  the  argument  thus 
far  on  the  genuineness,  authenticity  and  inspiration  of 
the  Scriptures  to  convince  every  thoughtful  reader,  that 


IS  THE  BIBLE  INSPIRED  ?  93 

this  book  is  worthy  of  a  very  careful  examination.  Can 
you  give  it  so  much  as  this,  without  prayer  for  guidance 
and  the  solemn  determination,  just  here,  to  do  riglit  in 
regard  to  your  Bible  and  your  God.  For  as  you  would 
not  call  him  an  honest  man  who  used  carefully  his  ears 
and  would  not  use  his  eyes  in  investigating  the  common 
things  of  life,  so  in  these  higher  things,  it  is  needed 
that  a  man  use  not  only  brain  but  heart,  not  only  the 
method  of  ordinary  search  but  the  peculiar  metliod  that 
befits  this  kind  of  investigation — the  method  of  prayer. 
Yes  ;  God  has  spoken  to  man.  And  there  are  tliou- 
sands  of  the  race  who  have  listened  with  the  reverent 
ear  of  the  soul.  And  the  utterances  of  God  in  his 
Word  have  made  them  men  of  a  higher  purpose  and  a 
better  aim.  The  lowly  have  come  and  made  God's  truth 
their  comfort  and  hope,  and  it  has  lifted  them  to  a 
higher  manhood.  And  think  of  how  many  of  the  most 
lordly  souls  the  world  has  seen  have  brought  their  trea- 
sures of  leai'uing  and  of  science  to  the  feet  of  him  to 
whom  the  Magi  bowed.  For  the  world's  scholarship 
and  science,  and  art,  and  culture  are  on  the  side  of  the 
Bilile.'     Little  eddies  of  oj)position  there  are  in  every 

'  "  Who  founded  Prague  and  Vienna  and  Heidleberg  and  Leip- 
sic  and  Tubingen  and  Jena  and  Halle  and  Berlin,  and  Bonn  ? 
Who  founded  Salamanca  and  Valladolid  and  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge and  Aberdeen  ?  They  were  Bible  men.  When  the  rest  of 
mankind  were  caring  for  the  mere  necessities  of  the  physical 
life,  Bible  men  were  holding  the  torch  of  science ;  and  these  men 
were  the  predecessors  of  the  Bacons  and  Newtous.  Who  founded 
American  colleges?    With  very  few  exceptions,  they  were  Bible 


94      A   YOUNG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

age;  "the  opposition  of  science  falsely  so  called." 
But  the  little  eddy  near  the  bank  could  not  exist  if  there 
were  not  further  out,  even  in  the  broad  and  deep 
channel,  a  vast  volume  of  water  floating  steadily  down 
towards  the  sea.  And  these  great  souls,  the  real  leaders 
of  the  world's  thought,  have  weighed  all  the  difficulties 
that  any  sceptic  has  ever  raised  ;  for  the  modern  objec- 
tions have  little  of  newness.  And  these  men  have  gone 
through  all  this  sea  of  difficulties ;  and  did  not  stay 
weak  and  floundering  in  that  Slough  of  Despond  as 
feebler  souls  have  done.  They  have  landed  on  the 
further  shore  of  a  careful  belief.  They  know  why  they 
believe  the  Bible.  But,  over  and  above  every  other 
reason,  they  can  say  with  Coleridge — and  men  in  every 
grade  of  intellectual  and  moral  development  can  join 
in  the  utterance, — "  I  know  the  Bible  is  inspired  because 
it  finds  me  at  greater  depths  of  my  being  than  any  other 
book." 

men.  Newton  was  only  one  of  hundreds,  who,  given  to  science, 
loved  his  Bible.  From  his  day  to  this  the  succession  has  been  com- 
plete. And  the  science  that  in  our  day  boasts  such  Bible  men  as 
its  Faraday,  its  Forbes,  its  Carpenter,  its  Hitchcock,  its  Dana  and 
its  Torrey,  cannot  be  considered  as  occupying  a  position  hostile 
to  the  Bible." — Iloicard  Crosby,  D.  D.,LL.  D.,  Lecture  before 
New  York  Association  for  Science  and  Art. 

"  Now  if  Christianiiy  is  the  foe  of  science  has  she  not  taken  a 
singular  method  of  demonstrating  her  enmity  1  Christianity 
was  the  first  as  she  still  remains  the  fast  and  fostering  friend  of 
science.  The  devotion  of  the  Christian  church  in  this  century  to 
education  is  one  of  the  notable  facts,  and  it  points  with  pride  and 
satisfaction  to  its  educational  institutions." — J.  6.  Holland. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Difficulties  as  to  Miracles   and  Teachings. 

In  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  midway  be- 
tween the  city  of  Destruction  which  Christian  must 
leave  and  the  wicket  gate  opening  into  the  narrow  way 
where  he  would  enter,  there  was  a  certain  bad  piece  of 
ground  called  the  "  Slough  of  Despond."  Into  it  every 
pilgrim  must  go.  Some  retreated  after  a  few  steps, 
coming  out  on  the  same  side  on  which  they  had  entered. 
Some  remained  hopelessly  fastened  in  the  terrible  quag- 
mire and  perished  there.  Some  also,  went  on,  went 
through,  and  came  out  safely,  nor  did  the  mud  cleave 
to  their  garments  when  they  stood  once  more  on  the 
firm  ground.  In  like  manner,  there  is  a  period,  more 
or  less  definite  and  continued,  in  every  young  man's 
life,  which  may  be  termed  the  period  of  natural  scepti- 
cism. It  is  the  time  when  doubts  come  up  like  thick 
banks  of  cloud  in  the  eastern  horizon  from  a  Avintry  sea  ; 
the  time  when  a  young  man  sees  and  feels  the  force  of 
the  objections  to  religion  ;  when  he  finds  grave  and 
serious  difficulties  in  his  Bible. 

A  young  man  has  been  tenderly  and  carefully  trained. 
He  has  religious  parents.     He  has  every   advantage  of 


PC     A    YOUNG    man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

Sabbath-school  and  sanctuary.  He  hears  indeed  of  objec- 
tions to  religion.  But  they  are  mainly  answered  in  the 
books  he  reads,  and  in  the  family  conversation  to  which 
he  listens.  He  believes  his  Bible.  The  men  about  him 
who  live  it  and  strive  to  practice  it,  though  imperfect 
men,  are  widely  different  from  the  noisy  profane  crowd 
that  he  occasionally  encounters.  He  is  a  believer  in 
religion.  He  holds  fast  to  his  Bible.  But  there  comes 
a  change.  He  feels  the  strength,  the  vigor,  the  impa- 
tience of  authority,  the  natural  independence,  which  is 
inevitable  as  the  young  man  takes  his  place  in  life.  He 
feels  competent  to  undertake  almost  any  thing.  He 
hears  new  objections  to  particular  portions  of  the  Bible. 
It  occurs  to  him  that  a  good  deal  of  his  faith  in  the  Scrip- 
tures is  the  result  of  education.  He  has  taken  many 
things  for  granted.  He  is  beginning  to  think  that,  had 
he  been  trained  wp  a  Turk,  he  might  have  been  a 
Mohammedan  ;  or  educated  a  Hindu,  he  might  have 
reverenced  the  Shasta.  This  is  all  true  enough  ;  and 
it  amounts  simply  to  saying  that  if  a  man  had  been 
badly  trained  the  results  would  be  likely  to  be  bad.  As 
an  argument  against  a  correct  religious  belief,  it  is  as 
poor  as  would  be  the  argument  against  sound  learning 
that  bad  text  books  would  tend  to  make  poor  scholars. 
Eight  views  of  science  are  none  the  less  correct  because 
a  man  was  trained  up  to  know  them.  But  our  young 
man  is  independent,  seK-reliant,  able  now  to  investigate 
for  himself.     And  he  is  tempted  to  think  it  only  fair  to 


AS  TO   MIRACLES  AISTD  TEACHIN'GS.  97 

do  what  sceptics  assert  is  the  mark  of  independence  ; 
that  is,  to  let  all  educatio7i  in  religion  count  for  nothing. 
And  afraid  that  he  may  be  unduly  balanced  in  favor  of 
the  Bible  by  his  education,  he  leans  the  other  way. 
Now,  he  harbors  every  difficulty.  Early  training  must 
not  solve  it.  He  will  meet  these  things  himself.  He 
falls  in  with  some  one  who  suggests  that  religion,  espe- 
cially as  a  father  and  mother  believed  in  it,  has  had  its 
day  ;  that  it  is  old,  puritanic  ;  that  the  march  of  mind 
has  left  it  far  in  the  rear  ;  that  it  is  independent  and 
manly  and  strong-minded  to  doubt.  Objections  to  this 
miracle,  to  that  doctrine,  and  the  other  duty  get  a  good 
deal  of  force  in  this  state  of  mind.  And  the  way  is  pre- 
pared for  listening  to  one  of  those  oily-tongued  men 
who  affect  to  pity  persons  who  still  hold  to  the  Bible, 
and  still  believe  in  Christianity.  ''They  wish  they 
could,"  so  runs  their  conversation,  "  believe  in  the 
Bible  with  the  simple  faith  they  had  in  childhood  ;  but 
they  regret  to  say  they  cannot  !  They  have  very  grave 
doubts  ;  would  like  to  have  them  solved  ;  but  have  no 
hope  that  they  ever  will  be."  They  tell  the  young  man, 
"Ah  !  when  you  know  more  of  philosophy,  and  of  the 
progress  of  free  thought,  yon  will  feel  differently  about 
your  Bible  ;  and  a  young  man  of  sense  and  spirit  and 
originality  like  yourself,  will  never  be  content  to  believe 
a  thing  is  true  because  your  mother  told  you  so." 

Now  in  this  state  of  things  the  appeals  of  religion 
are  not  felt.     The  young  man's  faith  is  more  thoroughly 
5 


98    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

undermined  than  he  himself  suspects.  He  does  not 
exactly  disbelieve.  But  he  does  not  feel  sure.  He  asks 
himself  whether  there  may  not  be  some  mistake ; 
whether  there  may  not  be  error  in  the  Bible  after  all ; 
whether  it  may  not  be  true  that  religious  men  ovei'-state 
Christian  doctrine.  At  least  one  must  not  be  in  haste 
to  commit  one's  self  for  or  against  religion.  And  this 
is  the  point  at  which  the  scepticism  of  our  day  is  all 
directed.  It  does  not  ask  that  a  man  be  a  disbeliever, 
but  only  an  unbeliever ;  not  that  a  man  deny  but  only 
that  he  should  doubt.  For  if  there  be  such  objections 
to  religion,  such  difficulties  in  the  Bible  that  its  truths 
are  neutralized,  it  is  all  that  scepticism  can  expect  to 
gain  in  an  age  like  this. 

I  want  to  put  out  a  helping  hand  to  any  young  man 
who  has  entered  in  any  degree  into  this  Siougli  of  De- 
spond, and  who  feels  embarrassed  by  the  difficulties  he 
finds  in  his  Bible. 

There  are  two  ways  of  meeting  these  difficulties. 
One  way  would  be  to  state  each  of  them  at  full  length 
and  then  answer  it.  But  this  would  require  volumes. 
There  is  another  way.  It  is  Peter's  way  when  he  said, 
"  Lord  to  whom  shall  we  go  ;  thou  hast  the  words  of 
eternal  life."  Some  were  leaving  Christ  because  of 
their  difficulties.  Peter  stops  a  moment  and  bethinks 
himself.  I  seem  to  hear  him  as  he  reasons  with  himself, 
*'  Suppose  I  leave  Christ  and  liis  doctrine,  what  shall  I 
gain  ?    To  whom  shall  I  go  ?    Shall  I  find  no  difficulties 


AS  TO  MIKACLES  AND  TEACHINGS.        99 

in  rejecting  tlie  miracles  and  teachings  of  Jesus  ?  What 
account  can  I  give  of  all  these  evidences  of  his  religion  ; 
for  these  will  he  prodigious  difficulties  to  me  as  an  un- 
believer." And  then,  turning  again  to  Christ,  I  seem 
to  hear  him  say,  "  Lord,  to  whom  can  we  go.  Thou 
hast  the  words  of  eternal  life."  To  every  young  man 
troubled  with  difficulties  in  his  Bible  I  say  stop,  and 
think  a  moment  as  to  what  would  you  gain  by  rejecting 
the  Bible  ?  Are  there  not  prodigious  difficulties  in  tak- 
ing that  position  ?  There  are  difficulties  wUh  the 
Bible ;  but  there  are  ten-fold  more  without  it.  There 
are  difficulties  in  believing  ;  but  there  are  infinitely 
more  difficulties  in  the  position  of  the  sceptic  and  even 
of  the  doubter.  Let  a  man  magnify  these  difficulties  a 
thousand  fold  and  it  would  be  still  true  that  the  dif- 
ficulties of  unbelief  are  far  more  formidable. 

We  shall  see  this,  first,  if. we  name  certain  Scripture 
facts  in  which  men  have  found  great  difficulties. 

I  name  miracles  as  one  of  them.  The  Bible  cer- 
tainly contains  a  narrative  of  miracles.  They  are  in- 
terwoven with  the  whole  texture.  It  is  impossible  to 
believe  the  Bible  and  interpret  it  fairly  without  believ- 
ing that  miracles  have  been  wrought  by  God  in  former 
ages  of  the  world.  Some  join  issue  just  here,  declaring 
that  miracles  are  incredible  in  themselves,  and  some 
asserting  that  a  miracle  is  impossible. 

But  when  a  man  asserts  that  a  miracle  is  impossible, 
he  should  stop  and  ask  himself  if  he  is  aware  of  what  he 


100     A  YOUKG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

assumes  ;  of  the  prodigious  difficulties  he  takes  upon 
himself.  "Miracles  are  impossible,"  he  says.  How 
does  he  hnoio  9  Is  he  omniscient  ?  Is  he  omnipresent  ? 
Does  he  know  all  the  things  that  have  transpired  or  that 
are  now  transpiring  in  this  universe  ?  If  not,  then  the 
thing  he  does  not  know  may  be  a  miracle.  There  is  a 
prodigious  difficulty  in  the  way  of  a  finite  man  who 
would  acquire  infinite  knowledge.  And  one  would 
think  there  would  be  some  difficulty  in  finding  a  man 
whose  modesty  had  been  so  far  forgotten  as  to  allow 
him  to  make  the  assumption  implied  in  the  statement 
"  a  miracle  is  impossible," — the  assumption  of  omni- 
science ;  the  assumption  that  one  is  himself  God  ! 

Is  it  said  again,  "  that  if  not  impossible  miracles  are 
very  improhable  ;  that  the  laws  of  nature  are  uniform  ; 
that  God  would  not  be  likely  to  institute  an  order  of 
nature  and  then  arbitrarily  break  through  the  laws  he 
has  established."  To  all  this  the  reply  is  instant ;  viz., 
That  no  one  alleges  miracles  to  be  common  ;  that,  com- 
mon, they  would  cease  to  be  miracles.  It  is  admitted 
at  once,  that  they  are  not  probable  as  every  day  occur- 
rences. Nor  is  their  commonness  claimed.  But  only 
this  ;  that  at  certain  periods  of  time,  when  they  were 
needed,  God  thrust  in  miracles  for  man's  good.  In  all 
those  great  crises  of  human  destiny,  in  all  those  eras 
when  a  new  dispensation  was  to  be  inaugurated,  when 
Moses  was  to  be  God's  instrument  in  introducing  the 
legal  dispensation,  when  the   prophets  were  to  appear 


AS  TO  MIKACLES  AND  TEACHINGS.  101 

with  divine  credential,  when  Jesus  was  to  come  from 
heaven  to  give  testimony  of  a  new  way  of  salvation — at 
each  and  all  of  these  points  of  intense  interest,  we  urge 
that  it  is  not  only  probable  that  God  will  thrust  in  his 
hand  of  miracle,  but  without  such  miracle  the  world 
would  have  been  more  astonished  than  with  it.  For  God 
made  man  to  expect  miracle,  to  demand  miracle,  and, 
when  the  miracle  comes  in  the  very  hour  of  greatest  need, 
to  believe  in  it  and  to  magnify  the  name  of  the  Lord  for 
what  he  has  done.  Has  God  put  this  expectation  of 
miracle  in  man,  as  a  deep  and  vital  thing,  on  purpose  to 
disappoint  it  ?  The  absence  of  miracle  under  such  cir- 
cumstances is  far  more  improbable  than  its  presence. 

And  here,  a  word  about  the  laws  of  nature,  to  which 
as  has  been  alleged,  ''  God  has  bound  himself."  But 
where  has  he  bound  himself  thereto  ?  Surely  no  man  can 
show  the  pledge  that  God  will  never  override  physical 
law  when  he  shall  choose  so  to  do.  What  is  a  law  of 
nature  ?  It  is  God's  usual  way  of  doing  things.  What 
is  a  miracle  ?  God's  unusual  way  of  doing  a  thing.  Is 
it  any  more  difficult  for  God  to  do  his  will  in  the  one 
way  than  in  the  other  ?  Surely  no  law  binds  him  to  do 
it  in  a  particular  way.  For  in  that  case  God  would  be 
imprisoned  in  his  natural  laws.  And  these  laws  would 
be  the  grave  of  his  omnipotence.  Even  the  silk-worm 
that  spins  its  own  winding  sheet,  at  length  bursts 
thi'ough  its  prison.  Is  the  infinite  one  entombed  in  his 
own  world?    Besides  what  are  these  "  laws  of  nature," 


102    A  TOUiq"G  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

con  sidered  as  a  restraint  upon  a  being  endowed  with 
will  ? 

It  is  a  law  of  nature  that  my  arm  shall  hang  down 
at  my  side.  It  weighs  just  so  much  avoirdupois  weight ; 
and  is  attracted  by  just  so  much  force  to  the  centre  of 
the  earth.  When  I  lift  my  arm  I  overAvork  the  law  of 
gravity.  My  will,  practically,  and  within  a  limited 
range,  suspends  the  results  of  law.  The  law  exists.  It 
acts.  But  I  counteract  it.  A  new  force,  supernaturally, 
is  thrust  in.  My  will  is  above  nature  ;  is  stronger  than 
nature  ;  is  sujjernatural.  Now  if  I  can  work  right  over 
nature,  right  above  her  laws,  cannot  God  more  also  ? 
If  I  am  not  a  prisoner  of  law,  is  he  bound  thereby  ?  If 
there  is  a  human  supernatural,  according  to  which  I 
act  above  nature,  thrusting  in  a  new  force,  is  there  any 
difficulty  in  believing  that  there  is  a  divine  supernatural 
which  can  work  miracles  9  It  would  be  strange  that  a 
man  having  the  power  of  will  should  never  use  it  by 
lifting  an  arm  or  leg  ;  and  it  would  be  even  more 
strange  if  God,  with  the  power  to  work  through  law  or 
over  law,  by  law  or  in  spite  of  law,  should  not,  when 
miracle  is  called  for,  work  the  needed  miracle.  The 
real  wonder  is  that  miracles  are  so  few  ;  that  God  so 
holds  himself  to  law,  i.  e.,  does  things  so  niuch  in  similar 
ways.  The  entire  absence  of  miracle  under  these  cir- 
cumstances is  the  most  improbable  of  things.  If  God 
had  not,  at  the  fitting  time,  thrust  in  his  hand  and 
wrought  marvellous  works  for  signs,   wonders,  tokens 


AS   TO    MIEACLES    AND   TEACHINGS.  103 

unto  man,  and  if  the  Bible  liad  not  contained  this  re- 
cord of  miracles,  the  omission  would  be  a  greater  hin- 
drance to  our  faith  in  God  and  in  the  Bible,  than  any 
other  that  I  know. 

That  God  should  perform  miracles  is,  then,  not  only 
possible  but  probable.  And  he  who  says  that  God  can- 
not, or  that  he  will  not  do  it,  involves  himself  in  a  host 
of  difficulties  any  one  of  which  is  overwhelming.*  That 
the  Bible  should  record  miracles  is  only  what  it  pro- 
fesses to  do.  For,  just  as  ordinary  histories  record  for 
the  most  part  ordinary  facts,  so  God's  word  records  those 
extraordinary  instances  in  which  divine  love  and  power 
have  spoken  in  the  language  of  miracle  to  arouse  atten- 
tion, confirm  truth  and  overthrow  the  powers  of  evil. 
Nor  let  any  man  when  in  his  Bible  he  meets  the  record 
of  a  miracle  say,  "0,  that  is  a  miracle," — as  if  a 
miracle  were  somehow  less  credible,  and  less  certain. 
Who  objects  to  a  book  on  mathematics  that  it  contains 
figures,  or  to  a  book  on  botany  that  it  describes  plants  ? 
It  was  intended  to  do  so.  And  God's  word  describes 
among  other  things  those  deeds  which  men  recognize  as 
miraculous.  It  was  intended  to  do  so.  Ponder  these 
wondrous  works,  these  mighty  miracles.  They  are 
not  freaks  of  power.  They  do  not  stand  up  apart. 
They  are  a  portion  of  a  mighty  structure.     They  have 

'  "  I  will  not  believe  a  miracle." —  Voltaire. 
"  I  will  not  believe  that  water  becomes  solid  in   winter,  and 
men  walk  on  it." — Japanese  Prince. 


104    A  YOUKG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

an  appointed  and  an  estimated  moral  yalue.  As  one 
studies  them  in  their  phice,  they  exactly  meet  the 
needs  of  the  hour  when  they  were  wrought.  They  ex- 
actly fit  into  the  edifice  that  God  is  rearing.  They 
are  divinely  given  object-lessons  for  the  instruction  of 
the  human  race.  The  moral  ends  of  miracle  are  the 
greatest  things.     For  moral  ends  are  final  ends. 

Again  ;  there  are  objections  to  these  facts  of  the 
Bible  because  of  their  remoteness.  "  They  occurred  so 
long  ago  ;  there  is  so  much  ojiportunity  for  mistake ; 
they  do  not  come  home  to  us  like  the  things  done  in 
these  last  critical  centuries  ; "  so  runs  the  objection. 
It  is  replied,  that  it  is  impossible  to  thrust  all  events  into 
one  century.  This  nineteenth  century  cannot  spread 
over  more  than  one  hundred  years.  A  man's  difficulty 
on  this  score  with  his  Bible  is  a  mere  impression,  and 
is  unworthy  of  him.  And  as  to  the  antiquity  of  the 
events,  of  course  they  are  ancient ;  that  is  what  the 
record  asserts.  And  as  to  the  authenticity  of  the  more 
ancient  of  them,  we  have  to  go  back  only  to  Christ's 
day  ;  to  the  time  which  all  allow  to  be  far  within  the 
period  of  authentic  and  reliable  history.  He  authenti- 
cated Moses,  and  David,  and  Solomon,  and  Isaiah. 
He  indorsed  the  Old  Testament  miracles,  reasserting 
their  truthfulness,  confirming  the  most  difficult  things 
in  Moses'  account ;  so  that  now  we  believe  them,  not 
only  on  Moses'  testimony,  but  on  the  comparatively 
modern,  and  also  superhuman  testimony  of  Jesus  Christ 


AS  TO  MIRACLES   AND  TEACHINGS.  105 

himself.  There  are  difficulties,  it  is  said,  in  the  narra- 
tive of  these  ancient  events.  Well.  Be  it  so.  But  the 
difficulties  are  absolutely  insuperable  in  the  way  of  be- 
lieving that  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  sent  men  to  the  Old 
Testament,  saying,  "search  the  Scriptures,"  when  he 
knew  the  first  pages  of  Genesis  to  be  false,  and  the 
prominent  events  of  creation  and  early  human  history  to 
be  misstated.  It  is  said,  "  that  even  eighteen  hundred 
years  is  a  long  while  ago,  and  that  since  that  time  there 
have  been  opportunities  for  falsification  of  facts."  The 
reply  is  that  all  the  world  believes  in  events  recorded 
hundreds  of  years  before  Christ's  day  by  ordinary  his- 
torians. Those  were  for  the  most  part  ordinary  events. 
But  here  in  the  New  Testament  are  extraordinary 
events,  recorded  in  solemn  and  authentic  documents. 
Within  a  few  years  after  the  events  are  said  to  have  oc- 
curred, the  writers  gave  names,  dates  and  places  ;  they 
said  that  in  a  certain  town  just  over  the  hill  from  Jeru- 
salem, Jesus  raised  a  dead  man  ;  and  his  very  name, 
Lazarus,  is  mentioned  ;  his  sisters'  names  given  ;  their 
house  specified  ;  the  very  sepulchre  described.  They 
said  that  yonder,  he  fed  five  thousand  men  in  the  wil- 
derness :  they  gave  these  facts  in  all  this  minuteness  of 
detail.  Any  body  could  examine  the  facts.  These 
things  were  not  done  in  a  corner.  They  were  noised 
abroad.  They  created  intense  interest.  If  there  had 
been  any  mistake,  the  able  and  acute  foes  of  the  new 
religion  would  have  proclaimed  it.  The  Jews  said  the 
5* 


106     A  YOUNG  MAIS^'S  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

miracles  were  done  by  Satan.  The  heathen  said  they 
were  done  by  magic.  But  both  admitted  that  the  things 
were  done.  And  both  appealed  to  our  Matthew,  Luke, 
Mark  and  John,  as  the  historians  of  the  facts.  Here 
are  the  records  in  the  Bible, — a  book  existing  to-day. 
The  sceptic  is  just  as  much  bound  to  account  for  the 
book  as  it  now  exists,  as  is  tlie  Christian.  But  the  sceptic 
has  the  most  prodigious  difficulties  in  his  way.  And  if 
any  young  man  attempts  to  stand  between  the  two,  to 
stand  as  a  doubter,  neither  believing  nor  rejecting,  then 
he  is  swept  by  the  batteries  of  both  sides.  For,  whoever 
is  right,  the  man  who  is  undecided  is  certainly  wrong. 

With  reference  to  many  a  speculative  question  often 
associated  with  the  discussions  of  Christianity,  nothing  is 
gained  but  much  lost  by  leaving  Christ's  teachings. 
There  are  the  inquiries  about  the  introduction  of  sin, 
the  transmission  of  diseased  moral  natures,  of  the  preva- 
lence and  cause  of  sorrow  and  death,  of  how  so  much 
suffering  can  exist  either  here  or  hereafter  and  yet  God 
be  good,  of  the  sovereignty  of  holiness  and  yet  the  allow- 
ance of  sin,  of  God's  all  comprehending  plan  and  yet 
how  evil  can  come  in  as  an  ordained  part  while  infinite 
holiness  is  unstained,  of  God's  supremacy  and  man's 
freedom  and  so  accountability — these  are  examples  of 
the  questions  to  which  I  refer. 

I  am  free  to  confess  that  on  these  and  kindred  sub- 
jects there  are  great  difficulties.  But  will  there  be  less 
difficulty  if  we  reject  the  Bible  ?    Did  the  Bible  origi- 


AS  TO  MIRACLES  AN"D  TEACHINGS.       107 

nate  these  questions  and  will  the  rejection  of  the  Bible 
solve  them  ?  These  questions  have  been  discussed  by- 
all  thinking  men,  whether  heathens  or  Jews,  whether 
Mohammedans  or  Christians,  whether  Infidels  or  Be- 
lievers. Outside  of  religion  they  have  been  debated  as 
earnestly  by  sceptics,  as  ever  among  devout  and  prayer- 
ful men. 

He  who  rejects  the  Bible  is  as  much  bound  to  ac- 
count for  the  origin  of  evil,  as  really  bound  to  show  how 
man's  free  agency  and  the  divine  sovereignty  can  coexist 
as  is  any  other  man.  For,  if  he  is  a  Deist  he  holds  to 
a  belief  in  a  Sovereign  God  ;  and,  ooi  inspection  of  his 
own  powers,  he  finds  himself  free.  If  he  is  not  a 
Deist,  he  has  otlier  and  more  formidable  diflSculties ; 
he  leaves  doubt  for  darkness,  difficulty  for  impossibility  ; 
he  plunges  into  depths  which,  fairly  considered,  would 
turn  the  brain  of  a  sane  man. 

All  these  inquiries  belong  really  to  another  domain  ; 
they  are  questions  of  philosophy.  They  would  rear  them- 
selves with  the  same  frowning  aspect  if  the  Bible  had 
never  been  given.  Sir  William  Hamilton  has  said, 
"  There  is  no  difficulty  in  religion  that  has  not  first 
emerged  in  philosophy."  Only  as  we  have  all  been  reared 
among  Christian  influences,  we  have  heard  these  ques- 
tions discussed  in  their  religious  bearing,  until  we  asso- 
ciate them  Avith  religion  itself,  and  so  unconsciously  we 
transfer  the  difficulties  in  the  one  to  the  charge  of  the 
other.     This  is  unfair.     Hume  spent  his  life  over  these 


108     A  YOUNG   man's   DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

very  questions,  looking  upon  them  as  a  philosopher. 
Let  no  man  present  as  his  reason  for  the  rejection  of 
Christianity  those  speculative  difficulties  Avhich  undeni- 
ably exist,  which  are  as  formidable  without  the  Bible  as 
with  it,  and  which,  if  not  completely  solved  by  revela- 
tion, are,  in  not  a  few  respects,  relieved  and  mitigated. 

If  we  reject  the  explanations  of  Christ  so  far  as  he 
gave  them,  what  then  ?    To  whom  shall  we  go  ? 

As  with  speculative  questions  so  with  practical  facts. 
There  are  perplexities  about  them.  But  one  gains  noth- 
ing by  rejecting  Christ's  religion  on  this  account.  Cer- 
tain things  the  Bible  finds  in  the  world.  It  did  not 
make  them.  It  is  not  responsible  for  their  continuance. 
It  simply  records  the  things  it  finds  to  be  the  actual 
facts.  Who  tliinks  of  charging  a  historian  with  the 
crimes  he  narrates,  a  writer  on  jurisprudence  with  the 
violations  of  law  which  he  discusses,  or  a  Avriter  on 
medicine  with  the  diseases  he  describes  ?  Common  his- 
tory as  well  as  sacred  history  records  the  fact  of  human 
guilt.  Could  a  man  write  a  pretended  history  of  a 
nation  who  were  not  sinners,  and  get  our  belief  that  he 
was  describing  actual  men  I  What,  men — a  nation  of 
men,  and  not  sinners  !  No  !  The  world  over,  men  dis- 
trust their  race.  Bars  and  bolts  and  heavy  safes  and 
careful  locks  guard  property. 

Sin  is  a  fact.  The  denial  of  Christianity  is  not  the 
disproval  of  human  sinfulness.  Nay,  if  the  doctrine  of 
Scripture  depravity  seem  at  first  view  to  be  harsh  and 


AS  TO  MIEACLES  AKD  TEACHINGS.       109 

repulsive,  think  a  moment  whether  the  fact  is  more 
frightful  and  awful  if  surveyed  outside  the  limitations 
and  alleviations  of  the  Biblical  presentation.  The  mass 
of  the  world's  sin  has  been  actually  lessened  by  the  con- 
version of  millions  through  the  Gospel.  Christianity 
has  been  an  elevating  power  over  against  this  depravity. 
I  can  think  better  of  the  world  with  than  without  the 
Bible,  see  less  depravity  if  the  Scripture  is  true  than  if 
it  is  false.  Eor  if  religion  is  a  delusion  or  a  cheat,  then 
not  only  do  we  behold  the  depravity  of  wicked  men, 
but  the  added  depravity  of  good  men,  who  in  that  case, 
are  miserable  pretenders  or  else  are  most  sadly  deceived  ; 
in  other  words,  are  either  mentally  or  morally  depraved 
beyond  all  the  rest  of  mankind.  And  in  addition  to  all 
other  cheats  and  shams  and  lies  under  which  men  have 
groaned,  we  shall  have,  if  we  reject  the  Bible  and  take 
the  infidel  view,  the  most  stupendous  cheat  and  lie  and 
delusion  of  Christ's  religion.  We  must  have  some 
doctrine  of  depravity.  It  must  be  either  the  Christian 
or  infidel  doctrine,  and  the  infidel  doctrine  is  far  more 
harsh  and  awful  than  that  of  the  Bible. 

And  the  sorrow  of  this  world  and  the  other  world 
which  men  charge  against  religion  is  not  due  to  it,  but 
is  true  in  spite  of  it  and  in  opposition  to  it.  It  is  often 
urged  that  much  suffering  of  conscience  is  endured  by 
persons  who  believe  in  religion  but  do  not  actually  obey 
the  commands  of  Christ.  This  is  true.  But  religion 
does  not  ask  a  man  to  disobey  and  so  to  suffer  under  an 


110     A  TOUN"G   man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

accusing  conscience.  Eeligion  asks  this  man  to  go  on 
unto  "peace  in  believing."  And  it  is  unfair  to  charge 
the  reproaches  of  conscience  and  the  agonies  of  fear  and 
the  dread  of  losing  the  soul,  which  some  endure  in  their 
theoretical  belief  but  their  practical  rejection  of  Chris- 
tianity, to  that  religion  which  offers  to  the  penitent 
calmness  of  conscience  instead  of  agitation,  and  love  and 
hope  instead  of  fear  and  dread.  If  a  man  disobeys,  and 
so  is  made  sorrowful,  let  him  complain  not  of  religion 
but  of  himself. 

But  men  have  felt  anguish  of  soul  who  were  far 
enough  from  being  influenced,  even  in  opinion,  by  reli- 
gion. Men  have  felt  remorse  who  never  heard  of  Christ 
or  saw  a  Bible.  In  mid  Africa  or  on  the  shores  of  fur- 
ther India  men  have  had  deep  soul-sorrow  as  the  con- 
viction has  forced  itself  upon  them  that  they  were  sin- 
ful and  depraved  ;  and  these  men  have  made  efforts 
almost  superhuman  to  quiet,  tlirough  worship  and  pen- 
ance and  sacrifice,  the  voice  of  inward  reproach.  Scep- 
tics have  died  in  sorrow,  cursing  the  hour  of  their  birth  ; 
or,  where  great  despair  has  been  absent,  there  has  been 
sometimes  a  puerile  levity  or  an  insensibility  which 
seemed  befitting  only  to  a  beast ;  and  the  want  of  all 
that  is  comforting  and  elevating  has  been  more  sad  than 
any  despair,  to  the  thoughtful  beholder. 

Did  any  man  ever  hear  of  one  who  died  cursing  the 
religion  of  Christ  because  it  had  led  him  into  sin,  be- 
cause it  had  defiled  and  ruined  him  ? — But  thousands 


AS  TO  MIRACLES  AXD  TEACHINGS.       Ill 

have  died  with  bitterest  maledictions  on  the  infidelity 
which  destroys  both  soul  and  body.  And  in  regard  to 
the  dire  calamity  of  death,  surely  the  gain  is  in  the 
Christian  view.  Some  insist  upon  associating  the  ideas 
of  death  with  those  of  religion.  As  they  turn  instinct- 
ively from  the  thought  of  the  grave's  loneliness  and  cor- 
ruption, so,  since  the  thoughts  are  connected  to  them, 
they  turn  also  away  from  religion.  Death  is  indeed  a 
stern  fact.  All  must  meet  it.  It  comes  to  the  swear- 
ing as  well  as  to  the  praying  man.  0,  in  this  matter, 
we  are  all  brethren ;  and  all  of  us  must  go  down  into 
the  dust  of  death.  If  there  is  or  is  not  truth  in  Christ's 
religion,  this  is  true,  we  must  all  die.  But,  rejecting 
Christianity,  we  refuse  the  light  from  beyond  which 
gilds  the  gates  of  the  grave.  And  as  to  the  sorrow  be- 
yond the  grave,  religion  names  it  that  we  may  avoid  it ; 
discloses  the  gulf  that  it  may  show  us  how  to  escape 
the  unending  grief  and  gain  the  unending  joy.  Even  if 
it  were  a  thousand  fold  greater,  no  man  need  endure  it. 
Even  if  it  were  unjust,  he  who  does  right  has  nothing  to 
fear.  The  more  terrible  the  future  sorrow,  the  more 
reason  for  not  being  among  the  wrong-doers  against 
whom  it  is  threatened. 

If  we  leave  Christ  and  his  doctrine  we  shall  give  the 
lie  to  all  the  best  impulses  and  deepest  intuitions  of  our 
nature.  There  are  instincts,  there  are  voices  from 
reason  and  conscience.  True  our  voluntary  nature  does 
not  always  obey  them  heartily,  but  the  voices  are  there. 


112    A  TOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

The  words  may  be  somewhat  indistinct.  For  the  voices 
of  our  voluntary  nature  are  louder,  and  we  obey  the 
wrong  heart,  rather  than  the  right  conscience,  and 
therein  stands  our  sin.  But  the  otlier  voices  speak  ;  and 
sometimes  the  man  must  listen.  **  We  are  immortal," 
says  a  voice  within  us.  Guilt  may  wish  it  were  not  so. 
But  the  reluctance  to  admit  this  inward  testimony  of 
men  has  not  availed,  and  men  for  the  most  part  be- 
lieve in  a  life  after  death. 

This  belief  the  Bible  assumes.  It  does  not  so  much 
prove  it,  as  take  it  for  an  accepted  fact.  But  the  doc- 
trine standing  in  outline  only,  or  perverted  by  false 
teaching,  is  comparatively  uninfluential.  Christianity 
takes  it,  develops  it  grandly,  clears  it  of  all  error,  lifts 
it  up  from  a  dead  belief  to  a  living  motive  and  a  thrill- 
ing hope.  It  teaches  every  man  how  to  make  his  im- 
mortality the  grandest  of  blessings. 

Now  suppose  we  leave  Christ,  what  then  ?  We  fall 
back  upon  our  general  intuitions  ;  definiteness  is  gone  ; 
all  influential  motive  has  departed.  Is  it  said  that  in- 
tuition gives  us  more  than  the  bald  and  bare  fact  of  im- 
mortality ?  I  must  deny  it.  Men  rejecting  the  Bible 
have  widely  various  beliefs  about  the  kind  and  char- 
acter of  this  immortality.  It  will  not  do  to  trust 
self ;  for  other  people's  reasons  teach  them,  as  they 
say,  differently ;  and  they  may  be  as  keen  as  we.  It 
will  not  do  to  trust  otliers  ;  for  how  collect  the  world's 
opinions  and  balance  them  in  search  of  truth  ?    It  is 


AS  TO  MIRACLES  AND  TEACHINGS.  113 

Christ's  teaching  or  none.  It  is  to  him  we  must  go  that 
the  intuition  may  become  an  influential  faith. 

Another  of  these  great  ground  principles  of  human 
thought  and  action  is  this  ;  that  what  we  do  now  bears 
upon  all  our  future.  The  belief  is  instinctive.  We  act 
and  reason  upon  it  daily.  Few  persons  deny  it  ;  and 
they,  only  in  the  matter  of  religion.  All  men  see  how 
results  follow  character  and  deeds.  To-day  you  and  I 
are  experiencing  partially  the  result  of  all  former  days. 
It  will  be  so  down  to  the  last  day  of  life.  It  will  be  so 
the  day  after  death,  the  year,  the  eternity  after  death,  if 
man  continues  to  be  man. 

The  Bible  owns  this  principle,  and  carries  it  out 
more  fully,  bids  us  act  daily  upon  it,  and  tells  us  defi- 
nitely what  the  result  will  be  of  certain  courses  of  action. 
"  He  that  soweth  to  his  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  reap  cor- 
ruption ;  but  he  that  soweth  to  the  spirit  shall  of  the 
spirit  reap  life  everlasting." 

And  now  if  any  man  objects  to  such  a  result ;  if, 
wishing  the  doctrine  not  to  be  true,  he  shall  throw 
aside  his  Bible,  what  will  he  gain  ?  He  will  not  have 
annihilated  this  belief  in  the  principle,  which  all  men 
naturally  entertain,  whether  believers  in  any  religion  or 
in  no  religion,  and  which  all  men  act  upon  in  daily 
life.  The  Bible  indeed  extends  the  application  of  the 
principle  further  than  we,  unassisted  by  revelation,  can 
do  ;  just  as  the  telescope  extends  our  vision  deeper  into 
the  heavens.     The  Bible  tells  us  of  two  future  eternal 


114     A    YOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS  BIBLE. 

states.  Of  the  lioly  joys  in  one,  of  the  sinful  sorrows 
of  the  other.  And  before  any  man  denies  these  utter- 
ances of  the  Bible  let  him  ask  what  he  will  gain  by  the 
denial  ?  Thrown  back  upon  the  general  principle,  he 
must  own  that ;  and  Christianity  simply  sheds  new 
light  along  the  old  line  of  man's  natural  and  instinctive 
conviction  of  immortality. 

If  we  leave  Christ  we  shall  do  the  greatest  yiolence 
to  our  reasons  by  rejecting  the  immense  amount  of 
testimony  which  has  convinced  thousands  of  the  best 
minds  of  the  truthfulness  of  Christ's  religion.  Look  at 
the  fact  that  the  mass  of  men  who  have  given  deepest 
and  most  earnest  thought  and  study  to  religion  for 
eighteen  hundred  years  have  received  the  religion  of 
Jesus.  The  men  of  most  knowledge  on  this  subject  ac- 
cept the  Bible  as  God's  revealed  will.  They  are  intelli- 
gent enough  to  know  all  common  and  some  uncommon 
objections,  and  yet  they  see  where  is  the  overwhelming 
weight  of  evidence.  That  great  mass  of  educated  mind 
which,  as  presiding  over  colleges,  teaching  in  seminaries, 
has  made  Christianity  a  siiecialty,  a  single  undivided 
object  of  investigation,  is  more  than  satisfied  with  the 
evidence  for  these  boolcs  of  the  Bible.  Intelligent  men 
have  indeed  rejected  the  Bible.  But  general  intelli- 
gence is  one  tiling,  and  the  special  study  of  a  life-time 
by  thousands  of  the  best  educated  men  of  each  Chris- 
tian century  is  quite  another  thing.  The  overwhelming 
mass  of  ability  and  learning  has  had  but  one  voice. 


AS  TO  MIKACLES   AND  TEACHINGS.  115 

Here  is  a  stupendous  difficulty  for  the  sceptic ;  a  fact 
absolutely  unaccountable  by  those  who  would  have  men 
leave  Christianity. 

It  is  the  same  with  the  interpretatioji  which  the  holy 
men  of  all  centuries  have  put  upon  the  doctrines  of  reli- 
gion. They  are  really  one  in  this  thing.  They  diifer  in 
explanations.  The  errors  of  their  times  influence  their 
modes  of  statement.  But  the  deeply  religious,  the 
really  holy  men  of  all  the  centuries  are  one  in  essential 
belief. 

They  all  agree  as  to  man's  sin  and  ruin  and  exposure 
to  God's  displeasure  ;  in  redemption  by  Christ's  death  ; 
in  salvation  only  by  faith  in  him  ;  in  the  inward  change 
of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  in  the  hope  of  eternal  life  through 
Jesus  Christ  for  those  who  believe  ;  in  the  resurrection, 
the  judgment  and  eternal  awards.  This  is  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  The  mass  of  devout  men  since  the  reforma- 
tion three  centuries  ago,  hold  this  as  the  truth.  Tlie 
mass  of  Jioly  men  in  the  Eomish  church  have  held  to 
these  verities  of  our  religion.  Time  Avas  when  the 
Roman  church  was  a  simple  Gospel  church  on  the  banks 
of  the  Tiber.  In  subsequent  centuries  she  was  cor- 
rujited,  not  essentially  in  her  creed,  but  in  her  rites, 
in  her  forms,  which  overlaid  and  well  nigh,  for  many, 
extinguished  her  creed.  And  the  reformers  protested 
not  against  her  creed,  but  against  the  mummeries  which 
to  many  usurped  its  place.  Her  creed  to-day  is  essen- 
tially right.     Thousands  in  her  communion  think  only 


116    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

of  the  mummeries  and  forget  the  creed.  But  many  we 
believe  have  thought  of  the  creed,  and  have  forgotten 
the  mummeries.  She  has  nurtured  holy  men.  It  is  the 
same  witli  that  vast  body,  the  Greeh  Church.  Some  have 
caught  at  tlie  deeper  truth  and  held  it  in  spite  of  the 
tradition  which  stands  to  so  many  in  place  of  the  Gospel. 
And  in  those  old  Syriac  churches,  older  than  the 
churches  in  Eome  or  Constantinople,  it  is  the  same. 
The  holy,  the  truly  Christian  men,  those  who  give 
noblest  evidence  of  piety,  have  clung  to  these  few  cen- 
tral doctrines  of  faitli ;  they  are  one  in  this  interpre- 
tation of  Christianity.  And  here  is  a  fact  which  those 
would  do  well  to  ponder  who  are  tempted  to  give  up  our 
Christian  doctrines.  These  holiest  men  are  in  essential 
agreement.  They  hold  one  language  about  sin's  ruin, 
and  Christ's  atonement,  and  the  change  of  grace  and 
the  way  to  heaven.  These  are  truths  which  they  have 
tested  by  experience.  These  are  the  ground-work  of 
their  religion.  And  these  are  the  pious  men,  if  there 
have  ever  been  pious  men.  Leaving  Christ,  in  this 
matter,  where  shall  we  find  genuine  piety  ?  These  holy 
men,  the  Edwardses,  Paysons,  Judsons  of  America,  the 
Luthers  and  Calvins  of  the  Protestant  churches,  the 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  the  Quesnels  of  the  Eomish  churcli, 
the  Chrysostoms  of  the  Ancient  Greek  church,  the 
Jeromes  and  Gregories  of  those  old  Syrian  churches,  the 
men  who  prayed  and  thought  and  preached  on  the  hills 
and  in  the  valleys  that  had  seen  Christ  and  his  apostles, 


AS  TO  MIRACLES  AKD  TEACHINGS.       117 

all  these  holiest  men,  out  of  the  depth  of  one  experience 
have  had  one  faith,  and  were  one  in  their  proclamation 
of  the  essential  facts  and  doctrines  of  Christianity. 
We  will  not  leave  these  men.  To  do  it  would  be  to 
leave  the  united  conviction  of  Christendom. 

And,  further,  to  cast  off  Christ's  religion  would  be 
to  leave  all  the  dearest  hopes  both  of  our  personal 
advancement  and  of  the  world's  moral  progress.  Inter- 
twined with  the  facts  of  Christianity  are  our  dearest 
affections.  So  that  we  must  say  with  Paul,  if  the  facts 
are  not  as  presented  in  the  life,  death  and  resurrection 
of  Jesus  Christ,  "we  are  of  all  men  most  miserable." 
We  hear  men  sometimes  with  flippant  tone  announcing 
their  belief  that  Christianity  is  false.  But  if  that  be  so, 
say  it  sadly,  and  with  tears,  as  you  would  tell  a  loving 
child  of  the  death  of  the  mother  that  bore  it  and  nour- 
ished it  and  loved  it.  Say  it  as  the'  most  sorrowful 
thing  that  human  lips  can  utter,  that  the  credentials  of 
Christ — his  mighty  deeds  and  more  mighty  words — are 
not  enough,  and  so  never  can  God  give  a  proven  revela- 
tion to  man.  Say  it  with  mourning,  that  the  perfect 
purity  and  elevation  and  stainlessness  of  Christ's  charac- 
ter in  the  New  Testament  is  all  a  mistake  ;  that  he  did 
not  live,  or  that  if  he  did,  his  disciples  devised  his  words 
and  imagined  his  deeds,  and  that  such  deception  has 
led  the  world's  enlightenment,  and  so  tiiat  we  are  all  a 
duped  race  led  by  dupes,  a  race  of  maniacs  led  by  fools 
and  knaves  ;  and  yet  that  these  fools  and  knaves  have 


118     A  YOUNG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

wondroiisly  helped  men  to   be  better,  and  made  men 
holier,  and  broadened  their  views,  and  informed  their 
intellects  and  enriched   their  moral  natures,  and   made 
them  to  live  nobler  and  more  self-denying  lives  and  to 
die  sweeter,  holier,  happier  deaths,  looking  onward  to  a 
still  holier  state  ;  and   yet  that  all  this  is  delusion,  de- 
ception, mistake,  imposture  !     In  striking  at  Christian- 
ity with  iconoclastic  hand  one  strikes  at  humanity  as 
well  as  its  dearest  hopes,  its  sweetest  consolations,  its  best 
ideals,  its   strongest  impulses,  its    most    praiseworthy 
charities  and  moralities.     If  it  must  be  said  at  all,  say 
it  with  bated  breatli,  that  Christianity  is  untrue  ;  for  if 
untrue,  it  is  the  most  awful  of  untruths  and  we  ought  at 
once  to  weed  it  out  of  human  literature,  out  of  common 
language  and  common  life  ;  we  ought  to  begin  with  child- 
hood and  stop  it  in  its  repetition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
to  forbid  infant  lips  from  ever  again  uttering  the  words 
"  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me  for  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  ; "  we  ought  to  stop  the  rites  of 
burial  and  cast  out  of  them  the  words  "I  am  the  resur- 
rection and  the  life,"  to  tell  the  mourner,  though  it  will 
make  him  twice  a  mourner,  that  he  has  not  only  lost  his 
friend  but  his  Saviour ;  we  ought  to  assure  age,  though 
it  will  tremble  all  the  more  to  know  it,  that  there  is 
some  mistake  as  to  the  Bible  which  has  been  the  staff  on 
which  it  leaned,  and  that  the  Heavenly  Father  did  not 
say,  "  I  will  never  leave  nor  forsake  thee,"  nor  Christ 
promise,   "He  that  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die." 


AS  TO  MIRACLES  AND  TEACHINGS.  119 

And  as  with  personal  hope,  so  witli  the  inspirations 
of  genius  and  the  progress  of  art  and  of  learning  ;  for, 
the  support  of  Christianity  gone,  there  is  for  them  a 
mournful  future.  Before  the  advent  of  Christianity, 
how  much  of  art  was  too  abominable  for  description. 
But  the  single  conception  of  the  Virgin  and  her  Child 
cut  in  a  thousand  marbles,  painted  a  thousand  times  on 
canvas,  in  every  variety  of  detail,  has  revolutionized  and 
elevated  art.  Nothing  blotted  out  the  old  ideals  until 
Christianity  flooded  the  realms  of  painting  and  statuary 
with  a  new  and  tender  beauty.  So  always  through  the 
centuries  this  religion  of  Christ  is  purifying  every  thing 
it  touches,  and  is  doing  it  exactly  as  far  and  as  fast  as 
men  take  into  mind  and  heart  the  gi'eat  facts  and  doc- 
trines which  are  its  distinction  and  its  glory. 

Nor  art  and  literature,  but  the  common  impulses  of 
common  life,  would  be  ruinously  affected  if  the  religion 
of  Christ  were  left  as  untrue.  All  the  higher  motives 
that  lift  men  from  a  merely  physical  condition  would 
droop.'  With  it  would  go  all  higher  views  of  God,  of 
duty,  of  the  nobility  of  man,  of  just  and  humane  law  ; 
and  society  must  inevitably  decline,  since   the  great 

'  That  this  is  not  a  mere  speculation  the  following  quotation 
from  the  elder  Pliny  will  show:  "The  vanity  of  man,  and  his 
insatiable  longing  after  existence  have  led  him  to  dream  of  a  life 
after  death.  A  being  full  of  contradictions,  he  is  the  most 
wretched  of  creatures,  since  the  other  creatures  have  no  wants 
transcending  the  bounds  of  their  natures.  Among  these  two 
great  evils  the  best  thing  God  has  bestowed  on  man  is  the  power 
to  take  his  oion  life." 


120     A   YOUISTG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH   HIS  BIBLE. 

teachings  of  morals  which  have  extorted  the  world's 
admiration  have  been  connected  with  a  system  called 
Christianity,  which  the  world  now  leaves  because  false  ; 
— and  if  the  one  part  false  how  the  other  true  ? 

It  has  been  thought  by  some  that  we  might  drop  all 
the  miracles  and  the  doctrines  that  are  distinctive,  and 
still  have  all  the  impulses  and  moralities  of  Christianity. 
Yes,  if  moralities  are  mere  outward  things,  mere  wax 
flowers  from  milliners'  shops,  instead  of  genuine  flowers 
growing  on  stems  and  out  of  seed  and  soil  as  God  made 
them  to  grow.  There  is  a  natural  belief  in  immortal- 
ity. But  it  is  inoperative  aside  from  the  light  of  reve- 
lation. And  as  it  has  never  been  efficient  apart  from 
the  Biblical  disclosures,  so  it  never  will  be  for  any  length 
of  time  after  the  Biblical  doctrine  of  it  has  been  left. 
For  a  single  generation,  possibly  for  two,  if  Christianity 
were  discarded,  there  would  remain  a  little  of  the  Chris- 
tian sap  in  Deism  ;  but  it  would  soon  depart.  It  is 
doubtful  if  mere  natural  religion  would  live  long  enough 
to  draw  another  breath  after  the  going  out  from  it  of  all 
that  is  distinctly  Christian  in  thought  and  feeling  and 
belief.  Says  one  of  the  best  thinkers  and  best  known 
educators  of  our  day  :  "  The  course  of  things  if  Deism 
should  be  the  ultimate  religion,  can  be  easily  foretold. 
As  long  as  the  recollections  and  influences  of  Christian- 
ity survived  its  fall,  earnest  souls  would  hope  on  ;  they 
would  stay  their  souls'  hunger  on  the  milk  drawn  from 
the  breasts  of  their  dead  mother.     But  a  new  age  would 


AS  TO   MIKACLES  AND  TEACHINGS.  121 

toss  about  in  despair.  If  a  sense  of  sin  remain,  tlie  life  of 
all  noble  souls  will  be  an  anxious  gloomy  tragedy.  Or 
if  that  burden  be  cast  off,  then  the  standard  of  character 
will  fall  and  the  sense  of  sin  grow  faint  so  that  pardon 
will  not  be  needed,  and  the  utmost  frivolity  be  reached 
in  life  and  manners."  * 

Nothing,  absolutely  nothing  is  given  us  in  return  if 
we  surrender  either  our  theoretic  belief  in  Christianity,  or 
our  practical  obedience  to  it.  What  else  can  do  any 
thing  for  the  deepest  yearnings  and  largest  wants  of  the 
soul  ?  Giving  up  Christianity  is  giving  up  the  thing 
that  ought  to  be  true,  just  as  there  ought  to  be  light  if 
there  are  eyes,  and  sounds  if  there  are  ears,  and  air  if 
there  are  lungs.  And  as  the  bodily  organs  are  furnished 
with  that  on  which  they  can  best  thrive,  so  the  faculties 
of  mind  and  heart  can  best  be  developed  by  the  religion 
of  Him  who  came  *'  that  men  might  have  life  and  might 
have  it  more  abundantly."  For  the  deepest  and  most 
important  intuitions  man  possesses  are  seized  upon  by 
religion  and  are  made  clear  and  influential.  The  germ 
of  these  truths  is  developed  by  the  Scriptural  doctrine, 
and  they  are  made  potent  for  man's  good.  All  the  diffi- 
culties are  at  least  as  great  without  as  with  the  Bible  ; 
as  great  in  the  germ-truth,  as  in  its  form  of  growth 
and  bud  and  blossom.  And  then  there  is  the  added 
difficulty  of  accounting  for  this  fact ;  how  it  is  that  if 

*  Pres.  Woolsey,  in  "  Religion  of  the  Present  and  the  Future." 


132    A  YOUNG  man's  difpiculties  with  his  bible. 

Christianity  is  false,  it  can  so  singularly,  powerfully, 
beautifully  take  np  and  develop  these  germ-truths  in 
the  mind  and  these  most  blessed  hopes  in  the  heart,  and 
thus  purify,  elevate  and  ennoble  the  man  who  believes 
and  practices  it. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Difficulties  from  Geology. 

It  has  come  to  be  believed  by  many  persons  that 
there  is  a  direct  conflict  between  Genesis  and  Geology  ; 
that  the  Scriptural  account  of  the  creation  of  the  world 
and  of  man  is  entirely  at  variance  with  the  results  of 
the  best  modern  scientific  study.  And  there  has  been 
not  a  little  doubt  aAvakened  in  the  minds  of  many  young 
men  as  to  the  accuracy  of  the  Scriptures  on  tliis  partic- 
ular subject.  It  is  believed  that  these  difficulties, 
stated  so  often  in  newspaper  and  magazine,  in  popular 
lecture  and  scientific  volume,  are  the  result  of  the  igno- 
rance of  some  scientists  as  to  the  actual  teachings  of 
revelation  ;  and  also  of  the  equal  ignorance  of  some 
Biblical  scholars  as  to  the  actual  teachings  of  science. 
There  is  undue  haste  on  the  part  of  some  men  of  large 
but  exclusive  acquaintance  with  science,  to  denounce 
the  Scripture  story ;  and  equal  haste  on  the  part  of 
some  friends  of  the  Bible  to  denounce  science  as  athe- 
istic. Crude  theories  in  the  interpretation  of  the  book 
of  nature  or  of  the  book  of  revelation  are  often  at  blame 
for  the  apparent  antagonism  of  things  in  which, 
rightly  understood,  there  must  be  unity. 


124   A  YouxG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

Our  best  Biblical  scliolars  who  have  a  fair  knowl- 
edge of  scientific  facts  gladly  welcome  any  light  that 
Bcience  gives  to  religion,  acknowledge  gratefully  their 
indebtedness  for  the  past,  and  express  their  fervent 
hope  and  belief  that  more  light  is  to  come  from  every 
department  of  human  knowledge  in  aid  of  the  study  of 
that  book  which  they  hold  more  and  more  firmly  to  be 
the  attested  Word  of  God.  "All  knowledge,"  said 
Cicero,  "is  of  use  to  the  orator."  And  every  student 
of  the  Scriptures  will  say  the  same  about  the  inter- 
pretation of  that  volume.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
geologists  are  indebted,  as  some  of  them  gladly  and 
reverently  own,  to  the  Biblical  story  for  the  wonderful 
help  it  furnishes  toward  the  explanation  of  the  facts 
which  they  cull  from  the  natural  world.  Truths  never 
disagree  when  you  get  at  them  and  bring  them  together. 
The  outer  court  of  nature  and  the  inner  court  of  revela- 
tion were  built  by  one  hand ;  and  the  architect  and 
builder  is  divine. 

I  propose  that  we  read  together  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  in  the  light  of  modern  science.  To  do  this,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  ask,  first,  what  the  author  of  that 
chapter  really  teaches  us  about  the  origin  of  nature  and 
of  man  ;  to  inquire  next  as  to  the  settled  facts  of  science 
as  substantially  agi-eed  upon  by  the  best  modern  author- 
ities in  the  scientific  world  ;  and  then  to  note  the  points 
of  agreement  between  the  two. 

1.  Of  the  Mosaic  record.     At  the  outset  it  should 


DIFFICULTIES   FROM   GEOLOGY.  125 

be  very  carefully  remembered  that  the  metJwds  of 
science  and  of  revelation  are  entirely  different.  One 
goes  backward,  the  other  forward.  One  starts  with 
facts  and  asks  the  cause.  The  other  starts  with  a  great 
Eirst  Cause  and  then  speaks  of  the  facts  as  they  proceed 
from  his  creative  hand.  In  the  arithmetics  we  used  to 
study,  there  were  examples  in  which  now  one  factor  and 
now  another  was  wanting.  If  one  was  gone,  it  was 
sought  by  multiplication ;  if  the  other,  the  answer  was 
sought  by  division.  In  like  manner  the  methods  of 
science  and  revelation  are  exactly  opposite.  Compare 
them  at  any  point,  until  the  problem  is  solved,  and  they 
may  not  agree.  But  in  the  end,  when  the  grand  result  is 
reached — as  it  is  not  yet — the  two  methods,  the  reverse 
of  each  other,  like  multiplication  and  division,  are 
mutual  proofs  of  the  correctness  alike  of  science  and  of 
religion  ;  of  the  book  of  Nature  and  the  book  of  God. 
Then,  too,  the  Imiguage  of  the  Bible  is  popular, 
while  the  language  of  science  claims  to  be  exact.  The 
popular  language  is  just  as  true  for  its  own  purposes 
as  that  of  science.  It  states  facts  as  they  appear  to 
be.  When  I  say  "  the  sun  rises  and  sets,"  I  speak 
ojitical,  but  not  scientific  truth  ;  and  the  man  must 
Avant  to  quarrel  with  me  who  would  convict  me  of  false- 
hood because  I  speak  of  sunrise  and  sunset.  I  could 
not  be  understood  in  a  popular  lecture  if  I  used  any  other, 
phrase,  though  otlier  terms  might  be  more  scientific. 
Moses  does  the  same.     Indeed,  no  other  way  was  pos- 


126     A   YOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE, 

sible.  If  he  had  used  the  scientific  terms  of  Egypt — and 
they  were  the  only  scientific  terms  with  which  he  was 
familiar — they  would  be  false  terms  to-day.  If  God  had 
inspired  him  to  use  our  scientific  terms,  Moses  himself 
and  all  those  who  have  lived  during  thirty  centuries 
could  not  have  understood  him.  If  he  had  spoken  in 
the  language  of  the  science  of  twenty  centuries  to  come, 
his  words  would  have  been  riddles  to  us,  as  well  as  to 
all  former  generations.  It  is  not  the  object  of  the  Bible 
to  teach  science  but  religion.  Its  references  to  the  facts 
which  are  now  called  scientific  are  few,  and  given  only 
in  popular  language.  And  the  facts  are  named  only  in 
their  religious  bearing. 

In  studying  this  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  we  must 
not  forget  that  it  does  not  fix  any  time  for  the  creation 
of  the  matter  out  of  which  the  earth  was  formed.  We 
have  two  verses  in  which  the  origin  of  the  substance  of 
the  earth  is  named.  Moses  is  careful  not  to  say  whether 
the  heavens  and  the  earth  were  created  six  thousand  or 
six  million  years  ago.  He  says,  "In  the  beginning." 
The  time  is  expressly  indefinite.  If  the  geologist  can 
show  proof  that  the  creation  occurred  a  thousand  mil- 
lions of  years  ago,  Moses  in  the  first  two  verses  of 
Genesis  does  not  contradict  him.  No  age  or  date  is 
given.  It  had  a  beginning.  It  was  not  eternal.  It 
had  a  Creator.     God  created  it.*     That  is  all  these  two 

'  Moses  uses  a  word  signifying  created  in  the  first  verse 
of  Genesis.    Afterwards,  as  in  the  fourteenth,  he  uses  another 


DIFFICULTIES   FROM   GEOLOGY.  127 

opening  verses  say  about  it.  What  millions  of  cen- 
turies were  passed  in  chaos  before  the  world  was  finally 
fitted  up  for  this  race  of  ours  in  the  last  six  days'  work, 
no  man  can  ever  know  ;  for  God  has  no  where  told  us. 
Nor  is  this  interpretation  of  the  two  opening  verses  of 
Genesis  any  thing  new.  Justin  Martyr,  and  Basil,  and 
Origen,  who  were  among  the  fathers  of  the  Christian 
church,  over  fourteen  hundred  years  ago,  gave,  this  in- 
terpretation. All  the  best  modern  commentators  say 
the  same  thing.  Lange,  Stewart,  Murphy,  Gonant  and 
others,  all  agree  that  the  opening  verses  of  Genesis 
describe  the  creation  of  the  original  matter  out  of  which 
the  earth  wa§  subsequently  through  vast  convulsions 
fitted  up,  shaped  and  formed  anew,  for  the  abode  of  the 
pre-adamite  creations,  and  at  length,  for  man. 

And  as  the  period  of  chaos  is  indefinite,  so  is  the 
length  of  each  of  these  six  "  day-periods,"  of  Moses. 
It  cannot  be  proved  that  they  were  days  of  twenty-four 
hours  each.  It  is  certain  that  the  sun  had  not  shone 
upon  the  world  to  make  the  first  of  them  such  days. 
The  writer  Moses  is  a  prophet.  He  elsewhere  uses  the 
term  "  day,"  Just  as  we  do,  to  describe  any  period  which 
had  a  beginning  and  an  end.  Any  limited  time  in  which 
a  thing  was  commenced  and  finished  is  "  a  day."  The 
whole  six  days  work  in  the  first  chapter  is  described  in 
the  second  chapter  as  the  work  of  ''one    day;"   the 

word  signifying  fashioned  or  shaped,  as  out  of  materials  already- 
created. 


128    A  YOUXG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

•writer  thus  using  the  word  as  we  do  both  in  the  definite 
and  the  indefinite  sense.  A  Christian  j^astor  said  to  his 
congregation  these  words  "  I  bring  you  as  a  text  for  to- 
day the  words,  *  Behold  now  is  the  accepted  time  :  Be- 
hold now  is  the  day  of  salvation.'"  In  one  part  of  the 
sentence  the  pastor  used  the  word  "day,"  to  denote  a 
particular  Sabbath,  a  day  of  twenty-four  hours  ;  in  the 
other  part  of  the  sentence  he  used  the  same  word  to 
'signify  a  day-period  covering  now  eighteen  hundred 
years,  and  to  cover,  it  may  be,  centuries  more — a  day, 
or  a  period  in  which  God  will  receive  returning  sinners 
to  salvation.  So  Moses  uses  the  word  "day."  When 
he  talks  of  the  "  tenth  day  of  the  month  Nisan,"  we 
know  that  he  means  a  day  of  twenty-four  hours.  When 
he  talks  of  a  day  of  creation  we  can  see  that  he  is  not 
so  limited.  It  may  cover  thousands  of  years.  It  is 
of  periods  in  which  God  began  and  finished  certain 
parts  of  the  creation,  that  he  speaks. 

Nor  must  we  forget  that  Moses  describes  creation 
optically,  i.  e.,  as  it  would  have  appeared  to  an  eye  wit- 
ness on  the  earth.'     God  made  these  things  to  pass  be- 

*  Is  not  this  also  the  fair  and  honest  way  of  interpreting  the 
passage  about  the  sun  and  moon  as  standing  still,  which  ia 
incorporated,  evidently  from  a  poetic  composition  or  ode, 
into  the  Book  of  Joshua  ?  It  is  optical  language.  Says  the 
great  astronomer  Kepler,  ''  The  only  thing  that  Joshua  prayed 
for  was  that  the  mountains  might  not  intercept  the  sun  from 
him.  Besides  it  had  been  zmreasonable  to  think  of  astronomy 
or  of  the  errors  of  sight ;  for  if  any  on©  had  told  him  that 
the  sun  could  not  really  move  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon  but  only  i7i 


DIFFICULTIES  FKOM   GEOLOGY.  139 

fore  him.  Some  have  supposed  that  he  was  permitted 
to  behold  an  inspired  vision  of  these  creative  scenes. 
He  describes  them  as  a  man  would  have  done  had  he 
been  there.  Such  a  man  would  have  seen  the  actual 
things  exactly  as  Moses  was  permitted  to  see  the  vision 
of  them.  In  the  Midian  desert  it  may  be,  on  six  succes- 
sive week  days  followed  by  a  Sabbath, — each  of  these 
week-days  beginning  and  closing  with  "the  evening 
and  morning,"  which  made  the  one  literal  day  of 
twenty-four  hours — on  these  literal  days,  God  may  have 
allowed  the  vision  of  those  vast  da^^-periods,  in  the  great 
characteristics  of  each,  to  pass  before  the  mind  of  Moses. 
No  human  eye  saw  the  actual  creation.  But  Moses  is 
to  see  the  vision  of  it,  as  if  he  had  been  the  eye-witness 
of  the  earth's  wondrous  changes  under  the  creative  hand 
of  God. 

And  thus  the  account  of  creation,  declaring  as  it 
does  God's  glory,  was  to  be  transmitted,  through  the 
leader  of  the  chosen  people,  to  the  entire  world.     He 

relation  to  sense,  would  not  Joshua  have  answered  that  his  one 
wish  was  to  have  the  dffy  prolonged  by  any  means  whatsoever."' 
That  the  Jews  understood  the  language  not  scientifically,  but 
phenomenally,  is  also  plain  from  the  words  of  Josephus,"  That  the 
length  of  the  day  did  then  increase  is  told  in  the  books  laid  up  in 
the  temple."  The  Samaritan  copy  of  Joshua  says,  "  the  day  was 
prolonged  at  his  prayer."  Similarly  Dr.  Chalmers  says,  "  I  accept 
it  in  the  popular  sense,  having  no  doubt  that  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  of  that  day's  history,  the  sun  and  moon  did  stand  still ; 
the  one  over  Gibeon  and  the  other  over  Ajalon."  To  those  in  the 
conflict  it  so  seemed,  and  a  Hebrew  poet  put  it  into  verse,  and  a 
Hebrew  historian  quotes  a  stanza  of  the  poem. 
6* 


130     A  YOUls^G   MIK'S  difficulties  WITH   HIS  BIBLE. 

sees  at  first  tlie  elements,  ci'eated  indeed,  but  still  in 
wildest  chaos.  There  was  dim  light.  It  was  not  sun- 
light but  nebulous  light.  It  endured  for  a  time  and  then 
came  darkness.  The  first  day  of  Moses'  vision,  corre- 
sponding it  may  be  to  the  first  great  day-period  of  God's 
creative  work,  was  ended.  Next,  the  mists  are  partially 
lifted.  The  beholder  would  have  seen  vast  masses  of 
cloud,  or  poi'tions  of  the  firmament  above  the  earth. 
It  was  the  second  day.  Then  comes  the  dry  land,  fol- 
lowed by  herbage  vast  and  gigantic  ;  groAving,  not  by 
sunlight,  but  in  the  steaming  heats  of  the  earth  now 
cooled  down  so  far  as  to  allow  of  plants  and  trees,  which 
were  afterwards  to  be  turned  into  coal  for  man's  use. 
It  was  the  third  day.  Next,  Moses  sees  for  the  first 
time  the  light  of  the  sun  shining  clearly  on  the  earth. 
That  sun  might  have  existed  for  untold  millions  of 
years.  But  through  the  mists  and  the  murky  atmos- 
phere of  the  world,  its  rays  had  never  before  pierced. 
Now  it  appears  in  the  heavens,  the  appointed  ruler  of 
the  day.  Then  come  into  view  the  huge  monsters  of 
the  deep,  and  the  fowls  of  the  air,  the  vast  dynasties  of 
the  fish,  and  the  beast  and  the  bird.  Last  of  all,  at  the 
close  of  the  sixth  great  day-period,  comes  man,  created 
in  the  image  of  God.  Such  is  the  order  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis.  It  is  the  spectacle  of  creation  as 
vouchsafed  to  Moses.  It  was  not  intended  to  be  scien- 
tific. It  was  the  general  order,  described  by  the  clinr- 
aderistic  of  each  great  period.     Nor  is  it  needed  that  we 


DIFFICULTIES   FKOM   GEOLOGY.  131 

understand  eacli  day-period  of  creation  as  exactly  match- 
ing the  prophetic  period  of  the  inspired  vision.  The 
general  object  is  to  describe  the  creation,  as  it  would 
have  appeared  to  an  observer  had  there  been  one  present 
to  watch  the  earth  as  God  was  preparing  it  for  the 
abode  of  man.' 

Turn  now  from  the  book  of  Revelation  to  the  book 
of  Nature,  and  let  us  ask,  next,  what  does  science,  and 
especially  the  science  of  geology — the  science  of  the 
rocks — say  about  this  same  creation. 

Here,  too,  a  few  preliminary  words  are  needed.  One 
is,  that  the  science  of  geology  is  yet  in  its  infancy.  It  is 
pot  a  hundred  years  old.  Instead  of  making  the  bold- 
est assertions  of  any  of  the  sciences,  and  so  drawing 
down  upon,  itself  their  condemnation,  it  should  be 
modest.  It  is  also  to  be  remembered  that  geology  has 
changed  its  fundamental  theories  again  and  again.  A 
book  that  was  an  authority  twenty  years  ago,  is  no 
authority  to-day  in  geology.  The  next  twenty  years 
may  witness  greater  changes.  New  facts  are  discovered. 
But  new  theories  are  made  even  faster  than  new  facts 

'  "  The  seven  days  are  not  literal  days  of  twenty-four  hours, 
nor  yet  seven  definite  historical  periods.  But  as  the  seven  seals, 
vials,  trumpets  of  John's  Revelation  represented  human  history 
by  a  typical  representation  of  each  of  its  grand  divisions  with- 
out any  one  of  them  being  chronologically  defined,  so  these 
seven  days  of  Moses  represent  in  a  dramatic  or  typical  form  the 
changes  at  creation,  each  grand  feature  being  boldly  sketched 
out  in  one  scenic  representation  cliaracterutic  of  that  period." 
— Primeval  Man  Unveiled. 


132     A   YOUNG    man's   difficulties   with   niS   BIBLE. 

are  obtained.  Nearly  every  leading  geologist  has  aban- 
doned his  own  most  startling  theories,  and  some  have 
gone  through  a  dozen  of  them.  Lyell  has  discarded  his 
former  views  about  the  age  of  the  world,  and  the  time  of 
man's  appearance  on  it'  Huxley,  who  had  claimed  mil- 
lions of  years  for  the  earth,  under  the  telling  blows  of 
Sir  William  Thompson,  the  first  mathematician  of 
Europe,  has  just  been  compelled  to  own  that  the 
claims  of  geologists  about  the  tremendous  age  of  the 
earth  are  not  proved^  It  is  the  same  with  the  age  of 
man  on  the  earth.  Huxley  thinks  that  as  star  dust  is  the 
material  out  of  which  the  earth  was  formed,  so  there  is 
a  physical  basis  for  all  plant,  animal  and  human  life. 
Agassiz  denounces  Darwin's  theory  of  "  natural  selec- 
tion." And  then  in  turn  is  denounced  by  the  whole 
scientific  world  for  insisting  upon  the  moral  unity  of 
the  race  and  yet  holding  that  man  sprang  not  from  one 
centre  but  from  several  centres — not  from  one  human 
pair  but  from  more  than  half  a  dozen  human  pairs.* 
Herbert  Spencer  denounces  all  the  rest  of  the-  scientists, 
deeming  his  theory  about  force  sufficient  to  account  for 
the  world  as  it  is,  and  for  the  origin  of  the  human  race  ; 
while  Miller,  Dana,  and  Guyot — names  that  equal  any 
— hold   most   zealously   to   the   theory   of   one   human 

'  "  The  life  of  this  eminent  man  is  a  history  of  retracted 
opinions." — Recent  Origin  of  Man  ;  Southall. 

*  "  A  few  years  since  the  preponderating  opinion  was  in  favor 
of  multiple  centres.  Now  (1875),  it  is  in  favor  of  a  single  origin." 
— Recent  Origin  of  Man. 


DIFFICULTIES   FR03I   GEOLOGY.  133 

pair,  and  on  scientific  grounds  indorse  the  Scripture 
statements  as  to  the  origin  of  the  race. 

The  scientists  are  not  agreed  in  their  theories. 
They  agree  only  on  some  general  facts.  What  are  these 
facts  ? 

Modern  science  now  almost  universally  adopts  the 
doctrine  that  the  earth  was  first  of  all  in  a  fluid,  gas- 
eous or  nebulous  state.  This  gaseous  mass  was  intense- 
ly heated.  Somehow  motion  was  communicated  to 
the  mass.  This  brought  out  heat ;  and  this  heat  was 
attended  with  a  feeble  light — scientific  men  call  it  cos- 
mical  light,  to  distinguish  it  from  sun-light.'  Thus, 
without  intending  so  to  do,  the  scientists  exactly  de- 
sci'ibe  the  first  of  the  Mosaic  days  of  creation, 

Next  came,  according  to  modern  scientists,  the  huge 
rocks  called  Primary,*  the  granites  and  the  different  in- 

*  "  How  could  there  be  light  before  the  sun?"  So  cried  Vol- 
taire, and  a  thousand  voices  have  echoed  the  question.  And  this 
objection  has  probably  done  more  to  unsettle  the  minds  of  young 
men  in  past  generations  than  any  other  difficulty  of  the  Bible. 
Those  who  believed  in  revelation  had  no  other  reply  than  to  ask 
men  to  wait.  The  waiting  has  been  richly  rewarded.  For  now 
no  respectably  informed  man  ventures  the  question.  Humboldt's 
words  about  cosmical  light  are  well  known.  He  claims  the  ex- 
istence of  light  "  which  is  a  similitude  of  the  dazzling  light  of  the 
sun.  The  existence  of  this  illuminating  power  we  discover  also 
among  the  other  orbs."  And  Proctor,  in  writing  of  a  late  solar 
eclipse  says,  "  We  recognize  the  existence  of  envelope  after  en- 
velope around  the  sun  until  our  earth  is  reached  and  overpast." 

^  Nomenclature  has  been  cast  and  recast  so  many  times  and 
on  so  many  different  systems  that  no  one  of  them  may  be 
followed  exclusively.    Twenty  years  ago,  naming  them  accord- 


134    A  YouKG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

gredients  of  granite.  They  settled  as  the  boiling  mass 
slowly  cooled  down,  and  are  the  natural  basis  of  all  the 
rest.     No  animal  or  vegetable  life  is  ever  found  in  them. 

Then  came  tlie  deposit  called  Secondary,  the  sand- 
stones, the  slates,  and  some  of  the  limestones.  Huge 
vegetables  that  could  only  grow  in  a  steaming  air,  and 
without  direct  sunlight,  appeared.  These  were  followed 
by  the  carboniferous  periods,  when  these  vegetable 
forests  were  turned  to  coal  by  means  of  some  tremen- 
dous change,  through  fire  or  water.  Then  came  periods 
when  vast  sea-monsters,  and  huge  birds  roamed  through 
the  oceans  and  the  airs. 

And  these  ages  were  followed  by  convulsions  in  which 
those  monstrous  creations  were  destroyed  and  their 
remains  are  found  to-day  embalmed  in  the  rocks.  But 
during  all  this  time  no  man  appeared.  Ages  seem  to 
have  gone  by  in  which  the  earth  was  cooled  down  so 
that  it  could  be  inhabited  by  vast  birds,  the  fossil  re- 
mains of  which  are  often  found,  but  no  single  species  of 
which  now  exists.  Those  fishes,  those  beasts,  those 
birds,  were  like  and  yet  were  unlike  those  now  living. 
But  not  one  of  them  could  have  lived  an  instant  in  our 

ing  to  their  supposed  order  of  strata,  the  division  of  the  rocks 
was  into  Primary.  Secondary,  and  Tertiary ;  next,  witli  regard  to 
tlie  appearance  of  life,  it  was  into  Azoic,  Paleozoic  and  Mesozoic, 
etc.  Subsequently  the  nomenclature  made  popular  in  America 
by  Lyell  was  employed.  But  he  has  himself  reconstructed 
his  vocabulary,  at  least  as  to  the  Pliocene  and  Post-pliocene 
ages. 


DIFFICULTIES   FROM   GEOLOGY.  135 

air  ;  nor  could  one  of  our  living  creatures  have  existed  a 
moment  in  their  atmosphere.  No  more  in  those  untold 
periods  could  man  have  lived  on  the  earth.'  Those 
beings  in  tlie  old  geologic  ages  were  not  the  fathers  in 
lineal  descent  of  any  beast  or  bird  or  fish  now  on  the 
earth.  **  There  is,"  says  Dana,  "  no  lineal  series 
through  creation."  Those  were  the  ancestors  of  these 
only  in  that,  at  each  successive  creation  and  destruc- 
tion, God  kept  the  type  ;  but  the  new  creation  was 
usually  nearer  the  perfect  type  than  the  one  it  replaced. 
Always  it  is  in  one  of  the  four  forms  of  Mollusca, 
Eadiata,  Articulata  or  Vertebrata. 

Then  came  another  vast  convulsion.  The  tempera- 
ture fell.  The  continents  were  buried  beneath  the  sea. 
And  vast  fields  and  even  mountains  of  ice  were 
formed  over  the  face  of  the  desolated  world.  This  was 
followed  by  the  drift  period,  so  called,  when,  this  whole 

'  "  In  the  distant  past,  not  a  trace  of  man's  presence  has  been 
found.  He  is  "  of  yesterday."  While  the  stone  volume  has  pre- 
served for  us  the  slight  impressions  o^"  the  Annelid  and  the  foot- 
trail  of  perished  Molluscs  in  the  soft  mud  over  which  they 
crawled  ;  while  it  has  restored  to  us  in  perfect  shape  the  deli- 
cately-constructed many-lensed  eye  of  the  Trilobite,  and  has  kept 
exact  record  of  the  death  struggles  of  fishes  on  the  sands  of  olden 
seas  ;  while  it  has  delineated,  on  carboniferous  columns,  fern- 
leaves  exquisitely  delicate  in  structure  as  the  finest  species  of 
modern  times ;  and  while  the  rain-drops  of  long  bygone  ages 
have  left  imprints  which  reveal  to  us  the  course  which  even  the  . 
wind  followed  ;  not  a  trace  of  man  is  visible.  Only  at  the  close 
does  he  appear  ;  science  finds  him  where  the  Scriptures  placed 
him,  and  sees  in  him  the  crown  which  continuous  type  had  long 
foreshadowed." — Fraser. 


136    A  YouxG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

North  Araerican  continent  submerged,  the  great  ice- 
bergs j&oated  from  the  north-west,  dropping  from  their 
bases  those  vast  mountains  of  gravel  and  those  vast 
boulders  which  are  found  all  over  the  continent  to-day. 
Says  Humboldt  "the  Alps  were  beneath  the  ocean." 
Says  Lyell,  "All  land  has  been  underwater."  "The 
highest  mountains,"  says  Tenny,  "have  been  the  ocean 
bottom."  And  then  came  the  last  great  act  before  man. 
These  continents  were  all  lifted  out  of  the  sea,  and 
the  waters  drained  into  the  rivers  and  gathered  into  the 
present  oceans.  And  at  length  on  the  last  of  these  great 
day-periods,  man  was  created. 

Such  is  substantially  the  course  of  creation  as  our 
scientists  now  hold  it.  A  few  of  these  points  are  still 
disputed.  But  these  conclusions  are  all  but  universally 
held,  and  are  as  certain  as  any  scientific  facts  can 
ever  be. 

And  just  here  a  few  words,  thirdly,  as  to  the  general 
agreement  of  the  record  in  the  Bible  and  the  record  in 
the  rocks. 

First,  all  science  says  that  there  was  originally  a  Crea- 
tor. Even  Darwin,  often  called  an  atheist,  says,  "life 
was  originally  breathed  by  the  Creator  into  a  few  forms 
or  into  one.  Owen  says  that  "  law  is  only  secondary 
cause,"  but  he  holds  that  law  is  guided  by  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  Creator.  Herbert  Spencer  leaves  a  place 
for  God  as  the  author  of  force.  While  Agassiz,  Hitch- 
cock, Dana  and  Guyot  all  insist  that  science  no  less  than 


DIFFICULTIES   FROM   GEOLOGY.  137 

revelation  declares  those  grandest  of  words,  ''In  the 
ieg inning,  God!  " 

Secondly,  all  science  declares  that  originally  the  earth 
was  chaotic,  sunless  ;  its  vast  boiling,  surging  masses  of 
melted  r«cks,  surrounded  by  clouds  of  steam  and  mist, 
were  lit  at  first  not  by  sunlight  but  by  cosmical  light. 
Exactly  so  says  Moses.  A  hundred  years  ago  men  said, 
*•'  Moses  is  surely  wrong  in  not  making  the  sun  to  shine 
npon  the  earth  until  the  fourth  day."  But  no  carefully- 
read  man  now  makes  that  objection.  The  huge  forests, 
which  now  are  turned  to  coal,  grew  then  in  the  steaming 
atmosphere  as  tliey  could  not  have  grown  in  the  sun's 
light.  Astronomers,  geologists  and  chemists  all  agree 
that  there  was  light  before  the  direct  rays  of  the  sun 
touched  the  earth.  How  strikingly  is  Moses  vindicated, 
or  rather  God,  who  spake  through  Moses,  in  the  sacred 
narrative. 

"  Let  there  be  liglit,^^  was  said  on  the  first  day. 
"  Let  the  sun  rule  the  day,"  was  said  on  the  fourth  day. 

Thirdly,  all  science  agrees  that  the  lowest  strata,  the 
rocks  first  formed,  have  no  vegetable  and  animal  re- 
mains. The  granites  are  before  the  vegetable  and  ani- 
mal forms  in  the  order  of  creation.  And  so,  too,  Moses 
does  not  mention  them  in  his  version  until  after  he  had 
seen  the  creation  of  the  substance  of  the  world. 

Fourthly,  science,  with  almost  entire  agreement,  de- 
clares that  there  have  been  successive  eras  of  creation. 
Vast  forests    existed.     Then  subsequently    they  were 


138     A   YOUNG    man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

destroyed.  Vast  sea  monsters  existed.  And  tliese  also 
ceased  to  be,  and  another  race  of  them  were  created  to 
exist  in  new  conditions,  and  these  too,  in  turn,  have 
been  destroyed,  and  new  ones  again  created.'  No  less 
than  twenty-seven  of  these  distinct  creations  and  de- 
structions are  insisted  upon  by  some  of  our  best  geol- 
ogists.* Professor  Owen  claims  that  some  species  sur- 
vived across  these  tremendous  convulsions.  But 
Agassiz,  and  with  him  the  great  mass  of  more  careful 
scientists,  insist  upon  it  that  these  eras  have  come  and 
gone.  Agassiz  says  "  there  was  a  succession  of  beings  on 
the  surface  of  the  earth.  But  the  fishes  of  one  age  are 
not  the  descendants  of  those  in  the  former  ijeological  age. 
There  is  no  parental  descent  among  them.     God  has 

'  The  more  pronounced  of  the  defenders  of  the  Darwinian  form 
of  the  development  theory  do  not  of  course  admit  this  conclusion. 
But  others  of  them  would  see  every  where  a  superintendence  of 
God,  and  such  a  combination  of  circumstances  as  needs  only  the 
divine  touch  at  the  ripe  hour.  Some  Christian  thinkers  are 
ready  to  admit  tliat  if  the  missing  links  of  proof,  confessed  by 
the  leading  advocates  of  the  development  theory  to  be  now 
wanting,  should  ever  be  found,  there  will  still  be  place  for  these 
eras  of  creative  power.  Of  vast  changes  in  which  the  great 
mass  of  existing  life  was  destroyed,  all  naturalists  speak  ;  but  as 
to  the  suddenness  of  them,  the  sharp  ending  of  their  epochs, 
some  stand  in  doubt.  The  type,  is  unchanged.  We  have  the 
same  great  ideas,  the  four  great  foundation-plans  of  animal  life. 
All  existing  and  all  extinct  creatures  are  or  were  molluscus, 
radiated,  vertebrated  or  articulated.  The  type  never  changes 
in  the  successive  eras  of  creation.  Related  in  form,  they  are 
not  related  in  descent. 

^  Alcide  D'Orbigny,  and  C.  H.  Hickcock  are  quoted  by  South- 
all  in  his  "  Recent  Origin  of  Man." 


DIFFICULTIES   FROM   GEOLOGY.  139 

created  all  the  types  of  animals  that  have  passed  away, 
to  introduce  man  upon  our  globe."  How  wondrously  is 
this  in  accordance  Avith  the  chapter  in  which  God  is  said 
to  have  made  the  fishes  and  made  the  birds  and  made 
the  beasts  and  then  made  man.* 

Fifthly,  the  general  order  of  creation  is  another  re- 
markable fact.  The  order  of  the  scientists  is  in  out- 
line— we  could  not  expect  agreement  in  detail,  for 
science  is  not  yet  perfect — is  in  outline,  that  of  revela- 
tion. There  is  steady  progress  from  chaos  up  through 
primary  rocks,  then  on  and  up  through  secondary  rocks 
with  traces  of  vegetable  life  ;  thence  upward  still  by  new 
creations  unto  the  mammal  age  and  then  into  the  highest 
created  forms  of  the  mammal  age,"  when  man  himself 
appears. 

Sixthly,  science  also  teaches  of  the  classification  of 
plants  according  to  their  ''  seed  "  and  "  kind,"  or  struc- 
ture. The  Linnaean  system  had  obtained  for  years  a 
place  in  the  scientific  world.     But  it  was  felt  after  all 

'  "  There  is  not  an  existing  stratum  in  tlie  body  of  the  earth, 
there  is  not  an  existing  species  of  plants  or  animals  which  can- 
not be  traced  back  to  a  time  when  it  had  no  place  in  the  world. 
The  forms  of  organic  life  had  a  berjinning  in  time." — Lyell. 

"  Species  appear  suddenly  and  disappear  suddenly." — Agnnsiz. 

*  The  waters  were  repeopled  with  beings  which  were  not  rep- 
etitions of  the  forms  just  exterminated,  but  original  concep- 
tions; and  yet  not  fundamcntnlly  different,  but  united  to  the  old 
by  such  identity  of  the  fundamental  plan  as  to  convince  us  that 
the  intelligence  which  brought  death  to  all  terrestrial  existence 
continued  to  prosecute  his  own  unchanged  purpose  through  all 
succeeding  epochs.—  Winchcll. 


140     A   YOUNG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH    HIS   BIBLE. 

that  a  classification  by  flowers  was  incorrect.  And  to- 
day the  botanists  of  the  world  have  gone  on  to  their 
new  classification,  which  is  only  the  old  classification  in 
the  first  chapter  of  Genesis.  "  Let  the  earth  bring  forth 
the  herb  yielding  seed,  and  the  fruit  tree  after  his  kind 
whose  seed  is  in  itself."  "  This  new  trophy  of  science," 
is  only  an  old  laurel  from  the  wreath  woven  so  many 
years  ago  by  Moses. 

Seventhly,  science  puts  vegetation  before  animal  life. 
Scripture  likewise,  in  describing  the  day-periods,  places 
the  plant  kingdom  before  the  animal ;  and  here  again 
the  two  records  agree. 

Eighthly,  science  puts  man  as  the  last  of  the  beings 
that  has  appeared  on  the  globe.  He  did  not  appear  un- 
til the  close  of  these  tremendous  convulsions  by  which 
the  earth  was  shaped.  Revelation  makes  man  appear 
at  the  close  of  the  sixth  great  period. 

But  when  was  that  ?  When  did  he  appear  on  our 
earth  ?  No  man  can  tell  us.  The  Scripture  on  this 
point  is  silent.  We  have  no  definite  chronology  in 
Genesis,  but  only  liistoric  periods  in  their  general  order. 
Attempts  have  been  made  to  ascertain  the  age  of  man 
from  a  purely  historic  basis  ;  but  this  method  is  clearly 
unreliable  when  taken  alone.  For  the  Hebrew  method 
and  the  Samaritan  method  and  the  Septuagint  method 
are  widely  divergent.  In  one,  the  period  from  Adam  to 
the  flood  is  sixteen  hundred  years,  in  another  thirteen 
hundred  years,  in  another  it  is  more  than   two  thou- 


DIFFICULTIES  FROM  GEOLOGY.  141 

sand  5-Gars.  In  the  period  between  Adam  and  Christ 
they  differ  by  fifteen  hundred  years.  What  wonder 
that  we  have  different  systems  of  chronology  by  men 
like  Ussher,  Hales  and  Poole  and  Bunsen,  none  of 
them  agreeing  in  the  age  of  the  human  race.  The 
system  which,  until  within  a  single  generation,  has 
obtained  most  widely,  is  that  of  Ussher,  which  places 
the  creation  six  thousand  years  ago.  But  the  Scriptures 
say  nothing  about  six  thousand  years.  And  if  tlie  time 
of  Ussher  should  even  be  doubled,  there  is  nothing  to 
prevent  it  in  the  Mosaic  record.  The  tables  of  gen- 
ealogy in  the  Bible  were  constructed  to  sliow  the  descent 
of  Christ  from  Adam.  And  the  word  "generations,"  is 
plainly  used  in  the  older  Scriptures  with  the  same  in- 
definiteness  as  the  word  "  day  " — a  usage  found  also 
in  the  New  Testament,  and  common  also  in  our  own 
century  and  language.  '*  The  extreme  uncertainty," 
saj's  Dr.  Hodge,  "attending  all  attempts  to  determine 
the  chronology  of  the  Bible,  is  sufficiently  evidenced  by 
the  facb  that  one  hundred  and  eighty  different  calcula- 
tions have  been  made  by  Jewish  and  Christian  authors 
of  the  length  of  the  period  between  Adam  and  Christ. 
The  longest  make  it  six  thousand  nine  hundred  and 
eighty-four  years,  the  shortest  three  thousand  four 
hundred  and  eighty-three  years.  If  the  facts  of  science 
or  of  history  should  ultimately  make  it  necessary  to 
admit  that  eight  or  ten  thousand  years  have  elapsed 
since  the  creation  of  man,  there  is  nothing  in  the  Bible 


142     A   YOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

in  the  way  of  such  concession.     The  Scriptures  do  not 
teach  us  how  long  men  have  existed  on  the  earth." 

It  is  well  known  that  on  the  subject  of  man's  age  on 
earth  the  geologists  have  taken  the  lead  of  all  other 
scientists  in  demanding  that  we  extend  into  an  almost 
immeasurable  past  the  time  of  man's  appearance.  Wal- 
lace talks  of  ''  ten  thousand  centuries,"  and  supposes  "  a 
time  when  man  possessed  no  powers  of  speech  nor  those 
moral  feelings  which  now  distinguish  the  race."  Others 
think  two  hundred  thousand  years  enough.  There  was 
also  much  talk  about  "pottery  found  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Nile,  which,  reckoning  in  a  certain  way  as  to  the 
deposits,  annually  made  by  the  river  mud,  was  thought 
to  be  twelve  thousand  years  old.  But  since  that  day,  at 
a  greater  depth,  in  the  same  deposit.  Sir  E.  Stephenson 
found  a  brick  bearing  on  it  the  stamp  of  a  modern 
ruler  of  Egypt.  And  more  recently  it  has  been  proved 
that  the  said  piece  of  pottery  is  of  Romati  origin.  Of 
the  so-called  fossils  at  Natchez  on  the  Mississippi,  said  at 
first  to  prove  man's  existence  one  bundled  thousand 
years  ago.  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  an  advocate  for  the  longest 
times,  declares,  "  it  is  allowable  to  suspend  our  judg- 
ment as  to  its  high  antiquity."  So,  too,  it  is  of  bones 
in  European  caves,  and  of  Swiss  dwellings  submerged 
in  lakes,  and  of  arrow  heads  and  flint  hatchets  which 
have  been  found  mixed  with  bones  of  extinct  species  of 
animals,  and  with  human  bones.  Lyell  says,  they  "  were 
probably  not  coeval."    And  some  of  the   most  eminent 


DIFFICULTIES  FROM:   GEOLOGY.  143 

geologists  declare,  itt  the  words  of  one  of  tliem,  "  It 
cannot  be  proved  that  these  remains  may  not  have  been 
•washed  up,  drifted  and  reassorted  from  earlier  deposits 
dating  back  at  the  utmost  but  a  few  thousand  years." 

It  is  the  same  with  the  immense  age  claimed  for  the 
Egyptian  Pyramids  and  other  monuments — viz.,  seven- 
teen thousand  years  before  Christ.  Recent  discoveries 
have  effectually  banished  the  old  illusions.  Champollion 
declares  "  no  Egyptian  monument  is  really  older  than 
two  thousand  two  hundred  years  before  Christ."  Wil- 
kinson decides  that  "  Egypt  has  nothing  older  than  a 
century  or  so  before  Abraham's  day." 

But  if  geologists  have  demanded  immense  periods 
for  the  past  history  of  the  race,  and  have  been  followed 
by  a  few  orientalists,  their  claims  have  been  disputed 
strenuously  by  another  class  of  scientists.  Astronomers, 
with  Sir  W.  Thompson  at  their  head,  while  desiring  to 
extend  the  period  further  than  Ussher  and  the  mere 
historians,  have  dealt  severe  blows  at  the  geologists  ;  for 
they  have  proved  that,  not  many  thousand  years  ago,  such 
was  the  temperature  of  the  earth,  that  man  could  not 
have  lived  upon  it.  It  is  then  a  settled  thing  that  the 
sciences  cannot  determine  accurately  the  period  of  ex- 
istence of  man  on  earth. 

The  historians  generally  favor  the  shorter,  the  geol- 
ogists the  longer,  and  the  astronomers  the  middle 
ground.  The  general  drift,  however,  of  scientific  and  phi- 
losophic thought  inclines  to  the  extension  of  the  period 


144    A   YOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

of  man's  existence  by  a  few  thousand  years.  If  the 
development  theory  should  at  length  be  shown  to  have 
a  scientific  basis,  if  even  that  particular  form  pf  it  which 
is  called  the  Darwinian  theory  should  be  accepted — a 
theory  less  brilliant  and  less  popular  than  that  of  the 
"vestiges/'  which  it  suj)planted,  only  in  turn,  as  we 
believe,  like  it  to  sink  out  of  sight — it  would  not  be 
necessary  to  reconstruct  a  single  verse  of  Genesis.  If 
more  than  one  physical  origin  for  man  is  ever  proved, 
nothing  in  the  Bible  can  be  alleged  against  it.  Iforal 
unit y  for  our  race  is  all  that  is  really  required.  The 
doctrine  of  "  diverse  origins  for  man,"  was  defended  by 
a  theologian  on  theological  grounds  and  as  a  necessity 
of  interpretation  more  than  two  hundred  years  ago.  If 
it  should  ever  be  joroved  that,  before  Adam,  there  were 
creatures  having  man's  physical  form,  and  that  at 
length  it  pleased  God,  in  Eden,  to  take  this  being, 
whose  body  centuries  before  had  been  *'  formed  out  of 
the  dust  of  the  earth,"  and,  then  and  there,  to  breathe 
into  him  a  higher  kind  of  life  in  which  he  became  en- 
dowed with  new  capacities  for  moral  character,  with  a 
new  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  with  an  immortal  and 
responsible  soul — all  this  would  not  be  in  any  necessary 
conflict  with  the  Scripture  story.  For  nothing  is  said 
as  to  how  long  a  time  elapsed  between  the  formation  of 
man  as  a  creature  of  mere  body  with  an  animal  life  in 
it,  and  the  subsequent  inbreathing  of  a  responsible  and 
immortal  spirit  by  which  the  race  became  what  we  see 


DIFJ'ICULTIES   FKOM   GEOLOGY.  145 

it  to-day.  It  would,  in  that  case,  be  just  as  true  that 
"  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men  for 
to  dwell  on  the  face  of  the  earth  ;  "  just  as  true  ''  that  by 
one  man  sin  entered  into  the  world  and  death  by  sin." 
In  that  case,  the  moral  unity  of  the  race,  taught 
as  a  historical  fact  by  Moses,  and  by  Christ,  and  also 
incorporated  doctrinally  with  the  teaching  of  Paul, 
could  be  held  and  defended  just  as  firmly,  though  on 
other  grounds,  as  Christians  hold  and  defend  this  fact 
and  this  doctrine  to-day. 

Indeed,  in  so  recent  and  authoritative  a  work  as 
Lange  on  Genesis,  we  have  a  note  of  the  translator 
which  reads  thus  :  "  this  does  not  exclude  the  idea  that 
the  human  physical  was  connected  with  the  previous 
nature  or  natures,  and  was  brought  out  of  them  ;  that  is, 
that  it  was  '  made  of  the  earth,'  in  the  widest  signifi- 
cation of  the  term;  he  having  an  earthly  as  well  as  a 
heavenly  origin."  Without  adopting  any  one  of  these 
theories,  nay  more,  holding  that  the  time  is  not  ripe  nor 
the  evidence  all  in  for  a  careful  verdict  about  any  one 
of  them,  a  Christian  may  rejoice  that  no  truth  will  ever 
displace  that  of  the  Scripture  record ;  that,  positive  as 
to  some  statements,  the  Bible  is  purposely  left  elastic  and 
uncommitted  about  many  a  minor  question.  The  agree- 
ment is  clear  of  the  two  records  as  to  a  Creator,  and  as 
to  one  race.  Equally  clear  is  the  statement  that  only 
a  few  thousand  years  since  man  did  not  exist,  and  as  to 
that  other  fact,  that  the  time  will  come  when  this  earth 
7 


146    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

will  be  no  longer  his  abode.  Says  Sir  W.  Thompson  : 
"  Within  a  finite  period  the  earth  must  have  been,  and 
within  a  finite  period  to  come  the  earth  must  again  be, 
unfit  for  the  habitation  of  man.  There  is  a  process  of 
events  toward  a  state  infinitely  different  from  the 
present."  Who  can  fail  to  recall,  in  listening  to  such 
testimony  from  scientific  lips,  those  words  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, "  The  elements  shall  melt,  and  the  earth  also 
and  the  works  that  are  therein  shall  be  burned  up." 
*' Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away." 

Science,  again,  declares  that  men  are  a  race.  This 
is  regarded  as  proven  by  bodily  structure,  by  human 
language,  and  by  mental  and  moral  likeness.  Says 
Owen  :  "  Men  form  one  species,  and  differences  are  but 
indicative  of  varieties. "  Max  Miiller  declares  "language 
has  one  common  source."  And  above  all  other  proofs 
is  that  of  mental  and  moral  science  ;  showing  as  it  does 
the  capacity  of  man,  and  man  alone,  for  faith  ;  the 
ability  for  moral  ideas ;  the  powers  for  knowing  God 
and  duty  ;  for  loving  the  pure  and  seeking  the  heavenly. 
For,  no  matter  what  theory  of  man's  origin  be  adopted, 
this  at  least  all  grant,  that  man's  soul  to-day  is  not 
an  ape  soul,  or  a  swine  soul,  but  a  human  soul — a  soul 
capable  of  faith  in  the  unseen,  capable  of  love  to  God 
as  "our  Father  in  heaven."  And  here  Scripture  comes 
in,  declaring  that  "  through  faith" — faith  in  testimony 
being  a  human  characteristic — "  we  understand  that  the 
worlds  were  made,"  and  that  "  God  hath  made  of  one 


DIFFICULTIES  FKOM   GEOLOGY.  147 

blood  all  nations  of  men  for  to  dwell  on  the  face  of  the 
earth." 

And  thus  young  men  are  taught  to  hold  fast  to  their 
confidence  in  the  Bible.  Scientific  theories  for  a  time 
may  oppose  the  statements  of  it.  A  fact  here  and  there 
may  as  yet  appear  strange.  Wait  a  little.  Let  the  men 
who  run  their  theories  against  Biblical  facts  have  time 
enough,  and  they  will  be  compelled  to  alter  their  theories. 
The  settled  facts  are  so  many  illustrations  of  Scripture 
truth.  Let  no  man  be  afraid  of  Scrii^ture  ;  no  more  let 
him  be  afraid  of  science.  God's  handwriting  is  never 
contradicting  when  truly  read. 

And  we  can  also  see  that  we  have  each  our  duty  as 
members  of  the  race  of  men  out  of  which  Christ  came. 
Adam  has  sinned.  The  taint  comes  on  us.  We  inherit 
it^  as  we  do  diseased  bodies  ;  as  we  do  the  liability  to 
physical  death.  But  after  all  we  are  voluntary  in  yield- 
ing to  any  sin  ;  for  any  sin  is  a  sin  "  after  the  simili- 
tude of  Adam's  transgression."  And  so  we  are  respon- 
sible for  being  sinners  before  God.  But  as  we  receive 
taint  from  Adam  through  the  race  bond,  so  we  re- 
ceive gracious  offers  through  Christ,  the  second  Adam, 
Here,  too,  it  is  our  voluntary  act  to  believe,  and  to 
accept  the  Holy  Sj^irit,  whereby  we  are  recreated  in  the 
image  of  God.  Paradise  can  be  regained.  The  race- 
bondin  Jesus  Christ  is  the  hope  of  the  world. 

We  are  prepared,  by  the  thoughts  already  presented, 
to  welcome  the  Scriptural  idea  of  the  "  new  heavens,  and 


148     A  TOUKG   man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness."  Vast  have 
been  the  convulsions  of  the  old  earth  both  through  flood 
and  fire.  But  the  floods  shall  come  no  more.  The  next 
great  convulsion  is  to  be,  according  to  God's  word,  by 
fire.  The  earth  and  the  things  in  it  are  to  be  burned 
up.  Then  every  mai-k  of  man's  sin  shall  be  obliterated. 
Every  trace  of  evil  shall  be  destroyed.  And  the  puri- 
fied earth  is  to  be  visited  by  a  higher  form  of  life  than 
ever  before.  Steadily  has  the  earth  gone  on.  Fit  only 
for  coarser  and  lower  forms  of  life  in  the  old  geologic 
six  day-periods,  it  has  been  now  for  a  few  years  the 
home  of  sinful  man.  Beyond  the  great  day  of  God,  it 
shall  be  reformed  and  remodeled,  and  become  the  spot 
that  holy  souls  from  heaven  shall  love  to  visit.  Thank 
God  that  the  old  world — now  the  type  of  hollowness 
and  deceit,  so  that  worldliness  is  another  name  for  sin- 
fulness— is  to  be  so  changed  as  to  become  an  outlying 
borderland  of  God's  holy  heaven  ! 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

Difficulties  fbom  Astronomy. 

A  YOUNG  MAN  states  to  the  writer  his  helief  as  fol- 
lows. " I  believe  in  a  God  who  has  a  general  superin- 
tendence over  the  affairs  of  the  world.  I  believe  in  the 
immortality  of  the  human  soul.  I  believe  that  what  a 
man  does  here  affects  generally  his  condition  after 
death.     Any  thing  farther  than  this  I  doubt." 

Urged  to  tell  why  he  doubted,  the  reply  was  that, 
substantially,  of  thousands.  "  God  seems  too  great  to 
concern  himself  minutely  about  our  human  affairs.  It  is 
too  much  to  believe  that  he  who  has  the  care  of  the 
whole  universe  will  condescend  to  notice  all  the  thoughts 
of  a  being  so  insignificant  to  him  as  a  single  and  separate 
man  :  too  much  to  believe  that  he  will  hear  him  pray 
and  do  any  thing  because  he  prays  that  he  would  not 
have  done  just  as  soon  if  the  man  had  kept  silent  :  too 
much  to  believe  that  this  infinite  God  had  such  a  care 
for  this  world — a  mere  dot  among  the  starry  worlds, 
a  mere  grain  of  sand  in  a  corner  of  his  universe — as  to 
give  his  Son  to  die  for  those  dwelling  upon  it,  whole 
nations  of  whom  are  but  as  the  invisible  dust  in  the 
balance." 


150    A  Youjs^G  mak's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

And  when  this  argument  is  pressed  at  night  and  out 
under  the  vast  canopy  of  the  winter  heavens,  with  un- 
numbered worlds  in  view,  and  when  it  is  remembered 
that  new  telescopes  and  larger  glasses  are  multiplying 
these  worlds,  each  as  worthy,  so  far  as  Ave  can  see,  to  be 
visited  by  a  Saviour,  each  as  worthy  of  the  divine  care 
and  providence  as  our  world,  the  impression,  to  some 
minds,  grows  stronger,  that  we  must  not  be  too  definite 
in  our  belief  about  the  minute  care  and  providence  of 
God.  '*  Is  not  a  man's  creed  best  when  it  is  briefest ; 
when  he  ventures  only  on  a  mere  outline  belief  as  to 
God,  the  soul  and  the  future  life  ? "  So  say  some. 
Others  feel  it.  And  they  hold  to  Christianity  but 
loosely,  because  of  the  starry  worlds,  and  the  planetary 
spaces  and  the  vastness  of  the  universe. 

It  is  believed  that  these  doubts  are  without  founda- 
tion ;  that  the  vastness  of  the  universe  confirms  faith 
rather  than  suggests  doubts,  when  carefully  considered  ; 
that,  since  God  is  no  where  general  in  ordering  the  stars 
but  every  where  special  in  the  realms  of  astronomy,  the 
inference  is  in  favor  not  of  a  general  and  outline  creed, 
but  of  a  special  and  distinct  and  Christian  belief. 
David's  song,  "  When  I  consider  thy  heavens,  the  work 
of  thy  fingers,  the  moon  and  the  stars,  which  thou  hast 
ordained  ;  What  is  man,  that  thou  art  mindful  of  him  ? 
and  the  son  of  man,  that  thou  visitest  him  ?  "  was  not 
the  minor  strain  of  doubt,  but  the  song  of  holy  wonder 


DIFFICULTIES   FROM   ASTllOXOMY.  151 

and  thankful  praise.     Others  might  doubt ;  but  he  must 
believe  and  adore  and  pray. 

Look  at  the  minuteness  of  the  arrangements  in  the 
starry  sky.  Tlie  first  impression  is  vastness.  World 
upon  world,  sun  upon  sun,  system  upon  system,  crowd 
each  other  to  the  very  verge  of  space.  But  where  is 
the  verge  of  space  ?  Through  the  best  telescopes, 
counting  a  little  patch  of  worlds  in  the  distant  star 
dust  where  they  are  sown  with  only  average  thick- 
ness on  the  sky,  and  then  multiplying  the  whole 
horizon  by  that  star  patch,  astronomers  count  billions 
of  stars.  And  when  larger  tubes  shall  be  pointed 
against  the  sky,  it  is  believed  that  the  number  now 
known  will  be  but  a  mere  fraction  of  those  then  to  be 
seen.  Figures  get  to  be  meaningless  as  we  try  to  number 
the  stars.  The  universe  is  immensity.  Think,  too,  of 
the  spaces  through  which  these  worlds  are  distributed. 
Our  world  spins  its  annual  round  of  two  hundred  mil- 
lion miles,  and  never  gets  within  thirty  million  miles  of 
a  neighbor  star.  Our  sun  has  for  its  nearest  neighbor 
sun  a  star  forty-six  million  miles  away.  And  if  this  is 
nearness  in  the  skies,  what  is  distance  ?  Looking 
only  on  this  vastness  we  are  abashed  and  confounded ; 
and  we  are  almost  ready  to  say  that  God's  care  can  be 
nothing  beyond  general  over  the  worlds,  and  especially 
over  man  the  minute  insect  here  in  a  mere  outpost  of 
the  universe.  But  then,  this  temporary  feeling  yields 
in  a  single  moment  to  our  firmer  and  calmer  reason. 


152    A  yousTG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

For  surely  all  this  immensity  tells  of  an  infinite  God. 
It  is  exactly  what  might  be  expected  of  him.  It  scatters 
atheism,  driving  it  beyond  the  stars.  There  must  be  a 
God  of  immensity,  when  the  universe,  the  work  of  his 
hands,  is  so  immense. 

Now  mark  the  fact  that  this  God  of  immensity  is 
great  in  the  minuteness  of  Ms  arrangements.  These 
planets  arc  racing  through  the  sky  at  the  rate  of  thou- 
sands of  miles  each  moment.  But  see  how  carefully 
God  keeps  time  on  this  race  course.  Jupiter  never  gets 
in  at  his  goal  at  any  given  point,  a  moment  too  late  or 
a  moment  too  soon.  One  mistake  of  a  second  here, 
would  wrench  the  system  past  all  computation.  The 
most  unwieldy  of  the  stars  comes  exactly  to  time. 
Turning  from  the  evening  sky  the  astronomer  said, 
*'  God  is  a  mathematiciau."  And  as  the  motions  are 
exact,  and  timed  to  the  millionth  of  a  second,  so  the 
masses  are  arranged  and  guarded  with  the  minutest 
care.  God  stands  with  scales  more  exact  than  those  of 
the  goldsmith,  and  weighs  out  to  each  planet  its  grains 
of  sand,  never  one  too  many  to  Jupiter  or  one  too  few 
to  Uranus.  A  handful  of  dust  in  the  wrong  place 
would  upset  the  machinery  of  the  heavens.  God  is 
minute  as  well  as  vast  in  his  universe.  If  his  lines  and 
angles  stretch  across  the  universe,  the  measurement  is 
exact.  Nothing  is  simply  and  only  general.  Every 
thing  is  carefully  poised  and  specially  considered.  God 
has  its  vastness,  because  he  has  the  minuteness  of  the 


DIFFICULTIES  FROM  ASTRONOilT.  153 

unirerse  in  his  hand.  What,  then,  is  the  religious  in- 
ference from  these  heavens  ?  Is  it  that  God  is  simply  a 
general  God,  who  has  made  only  the  cast-iron  frame  of 
the  machinery,  and  has  left  the  exact  fitting  of  each 
cog  of  every  wheel  pretty  much  to  itself  ;  that  he  is  to  be 
believed  in  as  having  only  ?i  general  care  for  mankind,  who 
in  turn  are  to  have  only  a  general  faith  in  his  existence, 
a  general  idea  of  religious  duties,  which  duties  are 
only  the  general  doing  of  things  that  are  about  right  ? 
Nay  !  Nay  !  Is  not  the  inference  in  favor  of  the  special 
belief  in  a  God  ever  near,  who  hears  prayer,  who  has 
cared  for  man,  and  who  reveals  the  moral  glory  of  his 
gi'ace  in  Jesus  Christ  even  as  the  glory  of  wisdom  and 
power  are  displayed  in  these  radiant  worlds  above  us. 
The  stars  do  not  say  Christ.  But  they  tell  of  a  minute- 
ness of  God's  care  for  worlds,  that  is  exactly  matched 
in  God's  care  for  the  souls  of  men. 

The  young  man  whose  doubt  I  am  discussing  argiied 
in  a  very  similar  style  from  the  revelations  of  the  mi- 
croscope. And  since  the  reasoning — that  from  the  im- 
mensity of  minute  things,  as  in  astronomy  from  the  im- 
mensity of  great  things — is  very  similar,  the  answer  to 
it  is  found  in  the  same  line  of  thought. 

The  microscope  is  simply  the  inverted  telescope. 
That  looked  among  the  mighty  orbs,  this  looks  down  on 
the  minutest  things  which  God  has  made.  It  discovers 
insects  so  small  that  twenty-seven  millions  of  tliem 
would  make  but  a  single  inch.     It  finds  vast  families  of 


154     A  TOUKG  man's   DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

various  kinds  of  them  in  the  cavities  of  a  common  grain 
of  sand.  In  each  drop  of  stagnant  water  is  a  world  of 
animate  beings  who  have  as  much  room  in  proportion  to 
their  size  as  have  the  whales  in  the  Pacific  ocean.  In  a 
single  leaf  it  finds  swarms  of  insect  life  grazing  as  cattle 
on  a  hill-side.  It  finds  a  down  on  the  butterfly's  wing 
every  fringe  of  which  is  so  exact,  that  human  art  in  its 
nicest  and  evenest  productions  is  only  clumsy  and  bun- 
gling. God  has  finished  off  and  elaborated  the  wing  of 
an  insect  that  lives  only  a  single  day.  Surely  no  man 
can  doubt  God's  minuteness  in  his  care  for  man,  after 
seeing  through  the  microscope,  what  he  does  for  beings 
lower  than  man.  If  the  telescope  humbles  us,  when  we 
invert  it  in  the  microscope  it  exalts  us.  Little  in  one 
view,  we  are  large  in  the  other.  Shall  God  care  for  the 
polish  on  the  beetle's  wing  and  have  no  care  for  an  im- 
mortal soul  ?  Doing  nothing  slightly,  but  all  things 
well  in  nature,  has  he  no  concern  for  the  greater  as  well 
as  for  the  lesser  things  of  man's  life  ?  I  can  better 
understand  Christ's  splendid  example  of  a  special  provi- 
dence in  the  numbering  of  a  hair  and  the  falling  of  a 
sparrow,  when  I  see  what  God  does  down  among  the 
living  insect  world  as  the  microscope  reveals  his  handy 
work. 

Then,  too,  when  we  think  of  the  myriad  races  lower 
than  ourselves,  is  man  quite  so  contemptible  a  being  ? 
Compared  with  God,  man  is  feeble.  But  compared 
with  the  insect,  he  is  almost  a  God.     His  world  is  small 


DIFFICULTIES   FEOM   ASTROKOMY.  155 

among  the  starry  worlds,  but  it  is  vast  as  compared  with 
the  world  of  the  insects  that  live  in  a  sand  grain.  If 
God  has  guided  the  instinct  of  those  minute  beings  so 
that  each  does  his  appropriate  work,  will  he  refuse  to 
hear  a  man's  earnest  prayer  for  guidance  in  doing  a 
work  that  involves  the  eternal  interest  of  a  priceless 
soul  ?  If  he  has  cared  so  much  for  their  bodies  that 
they  may  be  saved  to  fulfil  their  destiny,  will  he  have  no 
plan  of  salvation  for  man's  soul,  that  the  highest  and 
noblest  being  that  walks  the  earth  may  not  through 
sin  be  utterly  ruined  ? 

Then,  too,  these  manifestations  of  God  in  nature,  so 
far  from  awaking  doubt,  prepare  us  to  believe  in  his 
manifestation  in  humanity.  '  In  the  midnight  sky  he 
reveals  his  skill  and  his  power.  He  does  not  launch 
worlds  into  space  as  boys  throw  their  snow  balls  into 
the  air  from  the  mere  feeling  of  sport,  and  the  exuber- 
ance of  power.  He  has  the  motive  of  revealing  before 
intelligent  beings  his  wisdom^and  his  might.  But  why 
stop  there  ?  Why  skill  and  might  displayed,  and  all 
else  hidden  ?  Ah  ;  but  mere  things  will  not  show  the 
deeper  perfections  of  God.  Yet  being  God,  he  must 
desire  to  display  these  movings  and  motions  of  his  heart. 
He  can  only  do  this  to  man  fJiroiigh  man.  Yet  a  mere 
man  cannot  show  it.  He  himself  must  then  be  incar- 
nate in  man,  God  manifest  in  flesh.  Grant  me  this 
only,  that  the  worlds  of  the  midnight  sky  were  not 
made  in  sport ;  that  their  maker  God,  desired  to  reveal 


156     A  TOUN"G  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH   HIS  BIBLE. 

himself  in  these,  that  only  a  part  of  his  nature  could 
shine  in  them,  while  he  himself  could  be  enshrined  in 
man,  his  image — and  the  inference  is  clear  that  he  may, 
that  he  probably  will  come  among  us  as  Immanuel,  "  God 
luith  us.''  The  stars  do  not  hinder  me,  as  I  study  them  ; 
they  help  me  to  believe  that,  manifesting  his  glory 
and  power  in  them,  he  will  also  manifest  himself  in  a 
human  form.  They  prepare  me  to  accept  the  great 
fact  that  Jesus  is  the  God-man — who  came  to  show  us 
the  beating  of  his  heart  even  as  these  stars  show  us  the 
working  of  his  hands. 

Again  ;  turning  from  the  works  themselves  to  the 
attributes  of  God  as  indicated  by  them,  doubt  is  lessened 
rather  than  increased.  "  He  is  so  great  that  he  has 
greater  things  to  do  than  to  notice  each  man,"  says  the 
objector.  But  is  that  the  true  inference  from  the  fact  ? 
Why  not  state  it  thus  :  He  is  so  great,  that,  doing  all 
things  else,  he  can  also  notice  each  man.  He  is  great 
at  condescension.  He  is  great  in  providing  for  the 
things  that  men  would  call  trifles.  In  this  universe  the 
smallest  things  are  the  hinges  on  which  turn  the  gravest 
events.  Any  trivial  thing  not  carefully  worked,  the 
least  accident  in  a  trifle,  may  unhinge  every  broadest 
plan.  An  insect  of  an  hour  may  inflict  a  fatal  sting 
iipon  an  emperor  ;  and  his  death  may  destroy  a  nation 
and  change  the  map  of  a  continent.  A  God  every  where 
or  a  God  nowhere  is  the  alternative.  He  must  have 
every  event  in  his  control,  or  he  will  loose  the  reins,  and 


DIFFICULTIES  FROM   ASTEON"OMY.  157 

cannot  govern  his  world.  He  must,  then,  care  for  man. 
And  if  he  have  any  care,  it  must  extend  even  to  man's 
thoughts  ;  for  these  are  the  sources  of  his  acts.  And  so 
because  he  is  God  and  therefore  cannot  be  ignorant  even 
if  he  would  about  any  minutest  thing,  and  because  if 
ignorant  of  the  lesser,  he  could  not  govern  the  greater, 
we  feel  sure  of  the  Christian  doctrine  which  teaches 
that  God  is  near  man,  watches  every  deed,  marks 
every  purpose,  and  will  bring  every  thought  into 
judgment  whether  it  be  good  or  whether  it  be  evil. 
Surely  there  is  no  general  care  for  man  that  is  not 
first  special,  no  general  providence  that  is  not  parti- 
cular J  no  superintendence  for  the  whole  earth,  that  does 
not  take  in  every  particle  of  its  dust ;  no  watchfulness 
over  any  man's  soul  which  does  not  include  the  minut- 
est things  that  toucli  his  mortal  and  his  immortal  life. 

And  as  we  reason  from  God's  works  in  the  starry 
skies  to  his  nature,  and  to  the  manifestations  of  him- 
self he  will  be  likely  to  exhibit  on  other  fields,  so  wo 
reason  from  vian  and  from  his  capacities  for  understand- 
ing something  of  the  divine  ways  and  works.  The  stars 
are  mere  masses  of  matter.  They  do  not  know  them- 
selves. They  do  not  know  God.  They  do  not  know 
man.  But  man  knows  tliem  ;  and  looking  on  them  can 
thank  God  for  them.  They  have  no  likeness  to  God. 
God  is  their  Creator,  not  their  Father.  God  is  Father 
only  to  souls.  Shall  he  have  such  interest  in  those  stars 
that  know  not  any  thing,  and  only  a  general  outline  care 


158    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

for  a  human  soul,  which  alone  can  know  of  his 
works  ?  Is  tliere  no  evidence  that  God  loves  to  he  ap- 
preciated in  his  world  ?  Did  he  not  make  man  his 
highest  work  to  understand  and  interpret  the  other 
works  of  his  hands  ?  One  soul  is  worth  more  than  all 
the  stars  of  the  skies.  Those  stars  are  burning  out. 
Year  by  year  astronomers  discover  a  star  on  fire.  It 
burns  on  its  months  and  then  vanishes — a  token  of 
what  God  says  is  to  be  done  with  our  earth  at  the 
final  day. 

But  souls  do  not  cease  to  be.  They  have  an  immor- 
tality. God  has  done  so  much  in  endowing  them 
already,  that  we  should  be  suri^rised  if  he  did  not  do 
more.  We  have  seen  why.  he  who  reveals  his  power 
and  glory  in  the  stars,  should  also  reveal  himself  in 
humanity  ;  why  God  should  manifest  himself  in  Jesus 
Christ.  But  this  spiritual  nature  of  man  carries  us 
further.  The  great  thing  about  a  man  is  not  his  avoir- 
dupois. The  mind  makes  the  man  ;  the  soul  stamps 
him  as  of  worth.  Shall  God  reveal  his  thought  in  the 
stars,  and  shall  he  refrain  from  revealing  it  likewise  in 
man's  realm  of  thought  i.  e.  the  literature  of  the  world? 
Shall  men  reveal  their  thought  in  books  ;  and  shall 
God  have  no  Book  ?  Shall  his  thought  shine  in  every 
department  except  that  where  man's  thoughts  shine 
brightest  ?  Is  it  not  of  all  tilings  most  reasonable  ;  nay 
so  reasonable  as  to  be  absolutely  certain,  that  God  will 
reveal  himself  in  a.  book,  a  Bible,  a  revelation  in  human 


DIFFICULTIES  FROM  ASTRONOMY.  159 

thought  and  language  about  himself.  There  must  be  a 
Bible,  a  book  of  God,  given  through  men,  and  having  a 
divine  insjiiration,  as  all  the  great  works  of  human 
genius  have  a  human  insiDiration  in  them. 

A  few  years  ago  astronomers  said  that  there  were 
strange  perturbations  in  the  motions  of  certain  planets. 
What  was  the  trouble  ?  Some  one  suggested  that  if  a 
planet  existed  between  two  of  those  already  known  it 
would  account  for  the  disturbance.  The  disturbance 
was  carefully  calculated  and  the  position  of  the  supposed 
planet  ascertained,  and  when  they  pointed  the  iron 
tube  at  the  spot,  there  stood  the  waiting  star.  There 
was  need  for  it ;  and  so  the  star  itself  was  there. 

I  reason  in  the  spiritual  astronomy  of  religion  in  the 
same  way.  I  find  a  deep  want.  Here  is  a  God  whose 
notice  of  me  is  exact  and  minute.  lie  will  require 
of  me  a  strict  account  at  the  last  day.  But  I  cannot 
do  the  duties  of  this  life  without  some  knowledge  of  the 
life  to  come.  If  that  life  takes  on  any  complexion  from 
this,  I  must  in  some  way  know  about  that  coming  life. 
No  one  but  the  eternal  God  can  tell  me  certainly  about 
that  future  world,  what  it  is  ;  how  to  escape  its  terrors, 
if  it  has  terrors  ;  how  to  gain  its  joys,  if  it  has  joys.  I 
must  have,  not  the  inspiration  of  human  genius,  but  the 
divine  inspiration  of  God's  thought  in  my  human  lan- 
guage ;  in  other  words  I  must  have  an  inspired  Bible  to 
teach  me  of  the  future  and  so  of  the  present.  If  I  do 
not  know  about  that  life,  I  cannot  in   this  world  get 


160     A   YOUNG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

ready  for  the  future.  I  do  not  go  upon  the  journey  of  a 
week  without  preparing  for  it.  Can  I  go  the  eternal 
journey  without  making  any  special  preparation  in  this 
life  ?  How  can  I  know  in  what  way  to  prepare  for  a 
journey  so  solemn,  and  on  which  I  may  start  so  sud- 
denly ?  If  there  be  a  God  with  any  care  for  me,  he 
will  tell  me.  He  will  not  leave  me  to  be  tossed  on  the 
ocean  of  human  guesses.  He  will  ^ive  me  my  directions 
and  instructions.  And  so  I  reason  with  heart  and  head 
that  there  must  be  a  Bible  ;  just  as,  to  those  astron- 
omers there  must  be  a  star.  The  need  of  it  is  the 
proof  of  it. 

We  may  go  further.  Man  has  deeper  needs  than 
those  requiring  direction.  He  needs  redemption  from 
the  guilt  and  bondage  of  sin.  The  stars  are  guided  in 
their  courses  by  one  whose  skill  provides  for  every  inch 
of  their  course  and  every  second  of  their  time.  Their 
every  want  is  supplied.  A  thousand  influences  would 
draw  each  of  them  from  its  orbit.  But  God  provides 
for  them  that  they  dash  not  off  their  track  to  ruin. 
Unlike  them,  we  can  and  do  turn  away  from  our  ap- 
pointed duty.  But  shall  we  tliink  that  the  God  who 
would  rescue  a  star  from  its  ruin,  could  look  on  and  see 
men  lost  in  sin,  and  make  no  effort  at  their  salvation  ? 
I  see  him  give  Jesus  Christ.  I  see  Jesus  Christ  dying, 
the  just  for  the  unjust,  that  we  may  be  saved.  And  I  feel 
that  he  who  cares  so  closely  for  the  stars  in  their  orbits, 
and  who  holds  them  to  their  course,  is  doing  all  this 


DIFFICULTIES   FR03I  ASTRON"OMT.  161 

work  of  redemption  for  man,  bis  child,  the  being  with 
an  immortal  soul — doing  it  because  it  is  like  him  to  do 
it ;  like  him  here  to  show  his  heart,  as  there  in  the  sky 
to  show  the  wonders  of  his  hand. 

In  short,  I  am  compelled  to  feel  that  he  who  has  so 
garnished  the  evening  sky,  so  carefully  settled  the  paths 
of  the  stars,  so  timed  each  planet,  and  weighed  to  a 
grain  of  sand  each  orb,  who  is  never  general  but  always 
special  in  his  care  for  every  thing  great  and  for  every 
thing  small,  is  a  God  who  has  not  left  me  any  poor  gen- 
eral outline  creed  in  the  infinite  matter  of  religion.  lie 
is — thanks  be  to  his  name,  as  becomes  him,  and  as  be- 
comes man,  his  child — especially  careful  and  exact,  espe- 
cially full  and  explicit  in  telling  me  what  to  believe  and 
what  to  do  in  religion,  and  how  to  gain  a  holy  heaven. 
The  stars  do  not  make  me  doubt.  They  help  my  faith. 
They  intimate,  they  more  than  intimate  a  Bible  which 
teaches  me  all  I  need  to  know. 

Thank  God  that  we  are  not  left  to  any  man's  guesses 
in  religion.  I  ask  you,  young  men,  to  come  to  no  uncer- 
tain science  in  this  matter  of  religion.  God  is  our  au- 
thority here.  The  clear  doctrines  of  his  Word  shine  out 
in  the  moral  as  do  these  stars  in  the  natural  firmament. 
Nay,  these  stars  are  only  for  the  eye.  But  God's 
truth  is  for  the  soul.  We  can  prove  it  to  the  intellect. 
That  is  well.  But,  young  men,  the  God  ,of  those 
heavens  and  of  this  Bible,  asks  your  hearts.  He  has 
worlds  enough.     But  he  wants  appreciative  and  loving 


163    A  TOUKa  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

souls.  He  stamped  its  radiant  glory  upon  these  over- 
hanging heavens.  The  vast  spaces  of  the  ether  blue 
were  the  groundwork  on  which  he  wrought  out  the 
pattern,  so  brilliant,  so  gorgeous,  for  the  gaze  of  the 
worlds.  He  has  another  firmament,  higher,  grander 
than  this  of  the  evening  sky. .  Souls  are  the  stars  stud- 
ding that  firmament.  They  have  a  peculiar  lustre.  Com- 
ing into  existence  at  first,  as  the  world  was  created,  in 
chaos,  the  Spirit  of  God,  which  changed  that  old  earth- 
chaos  into  the  orderly  and  beautiful  world  where  we 
dwell,  has  called  these  souls  "  out  of  nature's  dark- 
ness into  his  marvellous  light."  They  are  destined  for 
the  higher  firmament  of  heaven.  They  are  to  be  at 
•length  stars,  not  for  man's  gaze,  as  are  these  evening 
orbs  ;  but  they  are  for  God's  delight,  for  the  garniture 
of  his  own  heaven. 

God  wants  hearts.  He  can  take  the  weakest  and 
most  guilty,  if  it  be  freely  given  to  him,  and  out  of  it 
he  can  make  an  orb  the  radiance  of  which  shall  shine 
when  these  "heavens  are  rolled  together  as  a  scroll  and 
the  elements  shall  melt  with  the  fervent  heat." 


CHAPTEE  VII. 
Difficulties  about  Histoeic  Facts. 

Visitors  at  the  Wliite  Mountains  are  taken  to  see 
that  great  natural  curiosity  which  is  known  as  the  "Old 
Man  of  the  Mountain,"  or  "  The  Profile."  On  the 
front  of  a  lofty  clilf,  hundreds  of  feet  above  him,  the 
traveller  is  shown  a  great  stone  face  with  its  gigantic 
features  sharply  cut  against  the  morning  or  the  evening 
sk3\  But  the  perfection  of  the  resemblance  is  discerned 
only  when  the  spectator  takes  his  stand  on  a  specified 
spot.  Seen  half  a  mile  in  either  direction  nothing  is 
visible  on  the  mountainside  save  a  rugged  mass  of  unin- 
teresting rock.  Everything  depends  upon  the  right 
approach  and  the  correct  position  of  the  man  himself  as 
he  comes  to  the  study  of  this  great  natural  wonder. 
What  if  it  be  the  same  with  other  things  ;  Avith  wonders 
in  the  moral  as  well  as  in  the  physical  world  ?  What  if 
it  be  a  very  especial  need  when  a  young  man  comes  to 
his  Bible,  that  he  should  approach  it  in  a  jjeculiar  way 
and  occupy  a  certain  definite  position. 

We  have  seen  that  the  book  wliich  we  call  the  Bible 
is  a  peculiar  book  ;  that  its  claims  are  unlike  any  otlier 
Tolume  in  existence  ;  that  it  is  a  grciit  moral  wonder. 


164     A   YOUXG   man's   difficulties   with   niS   BIBLE. 

Is  it  then  out  of  analogy  that  it  should  demand  a  pecu- 
liar mood  of  mind,  a  certain  suitable  state  of  intellect 
and  heart,  in  those  who  approach  it  ?  The  poetic  mood 
is  needed  for  the  poem.  The  philosophic  mood  is 
needed  for  the  study  of  the  volume  on  philosophy. 
The  scientist  claims  that  a  peculiarly  calm  and  patient 
mood  is  needed  by  him  who  would  come  aright  to  the  great 
problems  of  science  ;  that,  not  the  poetic  spirit,  nor  the 
philosophic  spirit,  nor  yet  the  theologic  spirit,  can  be 
any  substitute  for  this  mood.  And  he  is  right.  By  all 
means,  the  scientific  spirit  for  the  scientific  problem. 
So,  too,  the  i:)hilosopher,  devoted  to  the  broadest  in- 
quiries, insists  that  there  can  be  no  substitute  for  the 
philosophic  spirit,  if  one  would  study  the  volumes  of 
Leibnitz  or  Descartes,  of  Hamilton  or  Hickock.  And 
he  is  right.  Are  we  then  out  of  analogy  when  we  insist 
that  here,  in  the  study  of  the  great  moral  problems  of 
the  Bible,  there  is  needed  a  definite  mood,  a  certain 
reverent  and  devout  tone  of  mind  ;  and  that  neither  the 
scientific  or  the  j)liilosophic  spirit  can  be  substituted  for 
this  obvious  and  necessary  requirement.  Everything 
depends  upon  the  position  of  the  beholder  in  looking  up 
to  this  great  moral  wonder  of  a  Divine  Eevelation.  For 
the  Bible  is  not  made  for  the  scientist  as  such,  nor  for 
the  philosopher  or  poet  as  such,  but  for  them  all  as  men 
with  moral  wants,  and  for  all  other  men,  young  and  old, 
as  moral  beings.  For  it  is  not  our  scientific  or  philo- 
sophical capacities,  but  our  moral  capacities  that  are  to 


DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT  HISTORIC   FACTS.  1G5 

be  awake  and  receptive   as  we  come  to  tlie  Book  the 
grand  object  of  which  is  moral  teaching. 

And  yet,  I  can  understand  how  it  is  that  exceedingly 
shrewd  men,  overlooking  this  very  necessary  condition, 
should  make  such  sad  work  when  they  come  to  the  more 
wonderful  facts  of  the  Scriptures.  They  are  puzzled, 
confounded  and  led  on  to  infidelity  by  their  wrong  ways 
of  aiiproaching  these  things.  They  would  come  to 
"  the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand,"  or  to  any  other 
miracle  of  the  Bible,  just  as  they  would  come  to  any 
alleged  fact  on  the  purely  natural  plane  of  common 
things.  But  that  miracle  does  not  profess  to  be  a 
common  fact,  nor  to  have  been  wrought  down  in  the 
plane  of  nature.  It  refuses  to  be  questioned  by  the 
agriculturist,  by  the  chemist,  or  by  any  man  either 
of  vulgar  or  of  learned  curiosity.  It  was  not  wrought  for 
wonder-seekers.  It  declines  to  let  the  philosopher  talk 
to  it  of  "  laws  of  nature,"  and  of  fixed  principles.  It 
is  its  own  principle.  It  is  a  physical  fact  with  a  moral 
meaning,  and  coming  in  under  moral  laws,  in  a  system 
higher  than  nature.  It  is  a  moral  doctrine  incarnate  in 
a  physical  fact.  No  man  has  any  right  to  consider  it  out 
of  moral  connect io7is.  It  is  to  be  studied  only  in  its  re- 
lations to  the  Christ  who  performed  it,  to  the  time  when 
it  occurred,  to  the  place  it  filled,  to  the  truth  it  taught, 
to  its  bearing  on  the  development  of  the  Messiah's  plan 
arid  aim,  and  above  all,  to  the  niche  it  was  to  fill  in  the 
great  temple  which  God  through  Christ  was  building 


166    A  YOUKG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

for  the  reverent  worship  of  reverent  men.  To  put  these 
moral  connections  aside  and  out  of  sight  in  judging  of 
''  the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand,"  is  to  ignore  all  the 
reasons  that  made  the  miracle  a  possibility,  and  all  the 
conditions  furnished  by  its  author  to  us  for  our  investi- 
gation of  the  meaning  the  character  and  the  reality  of 
the  event  itself.  There  are  men  who  come  as  scientists 
with  a  profound  reverence  for  ''nature,"  and  little  for 
God,  ready  to  refer  any  thing  to  it,  but  receiving  the 
suggestion  to  refer  any  thing  to  him  with  the  shrug  of 
impatient  and  irreverent  unbelief.  And  these  men,  in 
this  mood,  would  apply  their  methods  to  the  miracles  of 
the  Bible  !  Nothing  can  be  more  absurd,  unless  it  be 
the  proposition  of  those  wlio  with  a  confusion  of  terms 
which  would  be  amusing  if  the  theme  were  not  so  seri- 
ous, propose  to  ascertain  **the  scientific  value  of 
prayer  ; "  as  if  anybody  ever  thought  it  had  a  scientific 
value  ;  as  if  any  Christian  thinker  had  ever  dreamed  of 
measuring  moral  values  by  physical  standards  ;  as  if  one 
could  ask  of  his  grocer  a  bushel  of  right  or  a  peck  of  wrong, 
of  his  tailor  a  yard  of  truth  or  of  error,  or  leave  with 
his  apothecary  an  order  for  the  chemical  analysis  of  a 
man's  love  for  his  child  and  the  likelihood  of  a  father  to 
grant  his  child's  petition  !  Christianity  requires  tests. 
Men  are  "to  prove  all  things."  But  it  suggests  there 
is  a  proper  way  to  do  it.  It  says,  put  your  crucible  and 
scalpel  where  they  belong  in  nature.  Study  your  laws 
whether  of  the  physical  world  or  of  the  mental  world, 


DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT  HISTORIC  FACTS.  167 

in  tlie  obvious  and  appropriate  ways  that  are  open  to 
you.  And  when  you  come  to  religious  facts  come  also 
in  appropriate  ways,  and  seek  moral  truth  by  moral 
methods.  We  object  to  the  claim  of  any  set  of  men, 
that  we  are  to  take  their  methods,  excellent  elsewhere, 
in  the  study  of  the  miracles.  For  the  miracles  are  not 
mere  phenomena,  mere  freaks  of  power  for  vulgar  curi- 
osity or  for  scientific  and  philosophic  inquiry.  They 
are  parts  of  a  mighty  moral  system.  And  they  are  not 
to  be  approached  except  from  this  point  of  advance. 
They  are  to  be  studied  with  reference  to  moral  ends  ;  and 
this  neither  the  scientist  nor  the  philosopher,  as  such,  pro- 
poses to  do.  The  miracles  are  for  man  as  a  moral  being. 
And  the  same  is  true  of  many  an  incident  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testament  which  is  not  miraculous,  but 
which  nevertheless  is  very  strange,  and  it  may  be  almost 
absurd  when  seen  alone.  But  when  studied  in  its  place 
and  seen  as  an  object-lesson  of  God  for  the  moral  teach- 
ing of  nien,  it  becomes  not  only  credible  but  instructive  ; 
not  only  probable  but  morally  certain,  as  an  event 
needed  for  its  moral  impression  at  the  very  point  of 
time,  at  the  very  place,  and  in  the  very  circumstances 
described.  So  that  if  there  ha(i  not  been  some  such 
event  occurring  in  the  process  of  the  divine  tuition  of 
the  race,  we  should  have  wondered  more  than  we  won- 
der now  ;  the  absence  of  such  events  being  more  remark- 
able than  their  presence  in  human  history.  Considered 
simply  as  a  method  of  healing  human  bodies  how  absurd 


168     A  YOUNG   MAK'S  difficulties  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

the  "raising  of  the  serpent  in  the  wilderness."  But 
seen  in  the  setting  of  the  story,  seen  as  God  meant  it  to 
be  seen,  as  a  teaching  and  a  prgphecy  of  Christ's  uplift- 
ing on  the  cross  ;  seen  as  a  renewing  of  the  primal 
promise  given  after  the  primal  sin ;  as  the  palpable 
objective  demonstration  of  the  great  moral  fact  of  an 
atoner  and  an  atonement ;  seen  as  a  lesson  set  to  the 
whole  world  as  to  the  place  and  the  value  of  faith,  the  in- 
cident is  not  only  redeemed  from  littleness,  but  it  shines 
in  such  grandeur  that  its  light  is  thrown  across  all  the 
separating  centuries.  The  entire  language  of  the  reli- 
gious world  has  been  colored  thereby,  and  men  every- 
where have  been  led  to  associate  the  idea  of  the  lifting 
up  of  Christ  with  the  lifting  up  of  the  brazen  serpent. 
Nay ;  the  Great  Teacher  himself  has  interpreted  for  us 
the  prophecy,  has  explained  the  object-lesson  of  God. 
He  has  said,  "  As  Moses  lifted  up  the  serpent  in  the 
wilderness  even  so  must  the  son  of  man  be  lifted  up  that 
whosoever  believeth  in  him  should  not  perish  but  have 
eternal  life." 

I  would  have  every  young  man  who  approaches  the 
Bible  come  to  it  with  the  true  idea  of  GocVs  method  of 
revelation  in  his  mind.  For  this  is  the  key  to  the 
volume.  That  method  is  easily  gathered  from  even  a 
general  perusal.  God's  method  is  to  reveal  Jiimself  to 
mankind  through  a  particular  race,  the  Hebreius  ;  and 
this  revelatioji,  he  tuill  have  to  culminate  in  a  particular 
person,  Jesus  Chi' is  t. 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT   HISTORIC    FACTS.  169 

The  Hebrew  race  Avere  fitted  to  become  the  medium 
of  tliis  revehition  by  certain  peculiarities. 

One  of  these  peculiarities  was  their  capacity  for  moral 
ideas.  True  of  all  Oriental  as  compared  with  the  Occi- 
dental nations,  this  capacity  to  receive  and  express  such 
truths  was  pre-eminently  a  Hebrew  trait.  They  were 
quick  beyond  any  nation  of  the  olden  time,  in  what  may 
be  called  religious  receptivity.  They  were  spiritual  sym- 
bolists. They  thought  in  figures  and  talked  in  meta- 
phors. They  went  down  naturally  to  the  spiritual  base  of 
things.  It  was  not  poetry,  but  religious  instinct  and 
the  moral  insight  which  made  them  see  in  all  things  the 
broad  shadow  of  God's  thoughts.  They  saw  him  every- 
where. And  he  was  uttering  to  them  spiritual  truths 
where  others  saw  nothing  but  bald  bare  physical  facts. 
To  the  Hebrew  mind  material  things  were  shadowy  and 
fleeting  ;  their  main  use  being  to  remind  man  of  the 
spiritual  world  so  near,  so  potent,  so  helpful.  This 
physical  world  was  the  world  of  the  dying  ;  the  other 
world,  overshadowing  this,  was  the  world  of  the  living. 
The  real  world  was  the  world  of  God  and  angels  and 
souls,  of  love  and  of  hate,  of  duty  and  of  destiny  ;  of 
heaven  and  of  hell.  Outward  things  were  just  the 
images  seen  in  a  mirror — not  the  realities,  but  only  re- 
presentations of  the  realities.  And  so  every  thing  in 
Palestine  was  a  shadow,  a  type,  a  semblance,  a  prophecy 
of  some  moral  fact  ;  a  representation  of  some  deep  reli- 
gious idea.  Each  object  was  bursting  with  moral  niean- 
8 


170    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

mgs,  and  the  whole  world  was  alive  with  God's  thoughts 
revealed  uuto  man  through  temporal  objects. 

This  religious  idealism  shows  itself  in  all  the  Old 
Testament  story.  The  Biblical  history  is  unlike  every 
other  on  this  very  account.  Says  Stanley  :  "  Eveiy 
incident  and  every  word  of  a  narrative  is  fraught  with  a 
double  meaning,  and  earthly  and  spiritual  things  are 
put  over  against  each  other — hardly  to  be  seen  in  the 
English  version,  but  in  tlie  original  clearly  intended." 
Take  the  promise  on  the  strength  of  which  the  He- 
brews went  out  of  Egypt  and  became  a  nation.  It 
reads,  literally  rendered,  that  they  should  come  to  "  a 
land  of  rest."  To  iis  there  would  be  just  this  meaning  ; 
that  after  being  vexed  in  slavery,  they  should  come  to  a 
land  where  there  was  no  task-master.  But  that  was  the 
very  least  of  all  the  things  which  it  meant  to  them. 
The  physical  was  the  mere  alphabet  for  the  spiritual 
idea.  So  to  a  child  the  mere  letters  of  the  word  "  men," 
take  the  attention.  He  says  to  himself  that  the  first 
letter  has  three  lines  with  curves  and  so  it  is  ''  m  ;  "  that 
the  letter  curved  at  the  top  is  "  e  ;  "  and  the  last  Avith 
two  lines  and  curves  in  it  is  "  n  ; "  and  that  all  together 
they  spell  the  loord  "  men."  But  a  full  grown  man  see- 
ing that  word  on  the  page,  does  not  sto])  upon  the  let- 
ters as  letters  ;  still  less  upon  the  word  as  a  word. 
There  is  a  tliouglit  in  it  for  him.  He  grasps  at  once  the  idea 
of  a  broad  race  of  mankind  with  unity  in  their  diversity, 
with  their  social,  their  political,  their  moral  relations. 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT  HISTORIC   FACTS.  171 

The  ancient  Hebrew  went  through  no  lengthened 
process  of  logical  deduction.  No  idea  had  he  of  reason- 
ing by  analogy.  He  did  the  thing  instinctively.  He 
did  not  set  up  the  outward  object  and  extract  labori- 
ously the  metaj^hor,  and  then  mechanically  apply  it  to 
moral  truths.  To  him  the  two  were  one.  If  either 
led  it  was  the  spiritual. '  And  when  Moses  gave  the 
promise  of  "'a  land  of  rest,"  every  Hebrew  mind  went 
backward  to  "  God's  rest,"  at  the  close  of  creation,  and 
took  up  the  idea  of  "  Sabbath  rest,"  that  is  of  heaven 
itself,  the  serene  abode  of  God.  Nor  backward  only, 
but  forward  the  word  carried  every  one  of  them. 
*'  Best,"  was  not  to  them  simply  a  state  of  bodily  repose. 
The  word  was  broad  enough  to  denote  God's  smile, 
favor,  blessing,  in  every  form  of  political  and  spiritual 
enjoyment.  It  meant  to  them  the  best  of  earth  and  the 
best  of  heaven.  They  seized  on  the  moral  idea  of  the 
physical  fact.     And  this  was  their  great  characteristic 

•  In  this  fact  may  be  found  the  removal  of  a  difBculty  which 
some  have  felt  as  to  "  Solomon's  Song."  It  has  seemed  to  them 
too  sensuous,  as  it  sets  forth  the  ecstasy  of  religious  feeling 
under  the  allegory  of  a  bride  and  a  bridegroom.  It  may  be  too 
warm  for  our  cooler  occidental  tastes.  But  the  Bible  is  for  the 
Eastern  as  well  as  the  Western  nations.  A  distinguished  Eng- 
lish orientalist  has  declared  that,  whereas  once  the  book  of 
"  Solomon's  Song,"  was  to  him  a  great  trial  on  ground  above 
named,  his  residence  in  the  East,  and  his  notice  of  the  fact  that 
the  religious  ideas  of  the  people  found  constant  expression 
through  nuptial  figures,  had  removed  from  his  mind  all  his 
former  feeling. 


172     A  YOUKG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

as  a  race,  and  the  leading   element  of   that  national 
feeling  which  fitted  them  to  be  a  peculiar  people. 

And  here  is  the  answer  to  the  question  pressed  so 
often  upon  the  young  man  who  keeps  his  faith  in  the 
Bible,  as  to  why  such  prominence  is  given  to  the  He- 
brew history.  God  selected  the  best  instrument  for  his 
purpose.  The  plan  of  revealing  himself  through  men 
once  chosen,  this  was  the  race  foremost  in  moral  capa- 
city ;  the  nation  wlio  not  only,  by  inheriting  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  best  ancestry,  but  by  their  natural  consti- 
tution of  mind,  were  best  fitted  to  do  his  work  in  this 
thing. 

And  there  was  also  to  be  a  distinct  moral  lesson  in 
the  development  of  the  Hebrew  nation.  Born  in  the 
wilderness,  the  nation  had  a  unique  training  for  their 
mission.  Nothing  like  it  before  or  since  in  human  his- 
tory. The  escaped  tribes  go  out  of  Egypt  under  cir- 
cumstances without  a  parallel,  and  for  a  journey  that 
was  as  singular  as  was  their  mission  peculiar.  "Why 
that  long  journey  of  forty  weary  years  ?  Some  will 
hasten  to  say  that  it  was  for  the  sins  of  the  people. 
But  then  the  sins  usually  named  as  the  reason  for  this 
journey  were  not  committed  until  after  the  journey  had 
begun,  and  there  were  indications  at  the  outset  that  the 
journey  was  to  be  long,  tedious  and  difficult.  The 
course  taken  at  the  very  commencement  led  them  away 
from  Palestine.  The  Land  of  Promise  was  but  a  little 
distance,  had  they  gone  in  the  direct  way.     There  were 


DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT   HISTORIC   FACTS.  173 

fewer  obstacles.  They  would  have  met  no  foes.  Most 
of  the  brief  journey  would  have  been  through  a  region 
of  country  desolate  enough  now,  but  then  watered  by 
"  the  river  of  Egypt,"  and  connected  by  a  grand  system 
of  canals  with  the  Mediterranean.  Had  they  taken  this 
the  natural  and  direct  course,  forty  days,  instead  of 
forty  years,  would  have  sufficed  for  the  journey.  But 
they  go  away  south-east  towards  the  desert,  rather  than 
np  north-east  towards  the  fruitful  plains  of  Southern 
Palestine. 

There  is  a  reason  for  this  thing.  May  it  not  be 
found  in  the  teaching  God  would  give  that  people  ?  He 
would  leave  such  a  stamp  upon  that  race  by  his  com- 
munications to  them  in  this  wilderness,  that  all  through 
human  history  they  should  be  *^a  peculiar  people." 
Such  laws  he  would  impose  upon  them  that  no  contact 
with  any  other  race  should  ever  entirely  obliterate  the 
impression.  Left  in  Egypt,  this  teaching  could  not  have 
been  given.  No  more  could  it,  had  they  gone  at  once  into 
Palestine,  They  must  be  separated  from  heathen  nations 
for  a  time.  They  must  be  under  direct  tuition.  On  the 
one  hand,  they  must  be  purged  from  the  defilement  of 
Egyptian  ideas,  on  the  other,  special  revelations  must  be 
given,  and  special  discipline  be  received.  The  wilderness 
was  their  university,  and  God  was  their  teacher.  They 
were  to  cease  to  be  tribes  and  become  a  nation.  It  was 
their  period  of  childhood, — the  period  when  what  is 
learned  abides  ;  when  a  single  year  tells  on  a  life-time. 


J  74     A   YOUISTG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

The  most  magnificent  ritual  the  world  ever  saw  was 
introduced,  every  rite  of  which  was  eloquent  with  tlie 
truths  of  the  coming  Gospel.  New  ideas  as  to  God, 
his  holiness,  his  justice  and  his  mercy,  were  put  before 
this  people.  Every  minutest  thing,  even  down  to  the 
fringe  on  a  priest's  garment,  was  significant,  while  the 
grand  feasts  and  festivals,  tlie  appointed  sacrifices,  the 
more  marked  celebrations  of  the  nation  were  intended 
to  make  them  acquainted  with  ideas  to  which  all  other 
Oriental  nations  were  utter  strangers.  Nor  by  laws 
alone,  but  by  providences  often  miraculous,  did  God 
give  them  teaching.  But  the  providences  would  have 
been  of  little  worth  for  this  end  aside  from  the  laws. 
Ordinary  and  extraordinary  observances,  daj^s  of  atone- 
ment and  of  passover  and  years  of  Jubilee,  all  were  to 
make  them  familiar  with  the  root-ideas  of  the  Gospel 
time.  It  was  designed  to  indoctrinate  a  people  in  reli- 
gion as  never  before.  They  were  to  be  directly  trained 
of  God  with  no  contamination  from  any  surrounding 
nation.  Tauglit  of  heaven,  apart  from  all  that  could 
hinder  the  force  of  that  teaching,  and  under  the  most 
favorable  circumstances  for  that  end  that  can  be  ima- 
gined, they  spent  those  years  in  the  wilderness. 

And  this  teaching  was  not  alone  for  the  Hebrew 
nation.  It  was  the  human  race  that  was  in  the  eye  of 
God.  The  tuition  of  the  wilderness  was  to  be  written 
out.  It  was  to  be  a  story  for  the  world's  study.  And 
so  it  has  been.     For  Mahometan  and  Jew  and  Christian 


DIFFICULTIES    ABOUT   HISTORIC    FACTS.  175 

alike  have  pondered  it.  Thousands  who  know  nothing 
of  general  history,  know  of  the  wilderness  wandering. 
Thousands  who  could  not  give  a  connected  story  of  the 
battles  of  their  own  land,  can  tell  of  the  battle  fields 
and  camping  stations  of  the  Hebrew  host  on  the  way 
from  Egypt  to  Canaan.  And  when  any  young  man 
is  pressed  Avitli  the  objection  that  ''  too  much  space 
is  occupied  in  the  Bible  by  tlie  story  of  an  old  race 
which  has  now  lost  its  importance  in  human  history," 
let  him  be  ready  to  reply  that  such  an  objection  shows 
not  only  narrowness  of  view  but  an  entire  mistake  as  to 
God's  plan  of  using  that  Hebrew  race  in  their  historical 
development  as  the  medium  of  his  revelation  to  mankind. 
Seen  in  its  true  relation,  seen  as  an  intentional  lesson- 
paper  for  the  world,  the  old  story  of  that  peculiar 
nationality  is  not  a  Hebrew  idyl,  nor  a  scrap  of  anti- 
quity to  be  preserved  by  those  curious  and  careful  about 
the  olden  time.  It  is  for  us  as  well  as  for  them  ;  a  thing 
of  to-day  in  meaning  though  of  yesterday  in  fact.  Its 
minuteness  is  not  trivial,  but  intentionally  careful.  Its 
incidents  are  not  accidents,  but  they  are  put  into  the 
record  to  be  pondered,  as  they  have  actually  been,  by 
the  most  thoughtful  and  advanced  souls  of  the  race  in 
their  search  after  God's  will. 

Nor,  again,  can  we  overlook  the  geograpliical  posi- 
tion of  this  Hebrew  race.  The  laud  of  Canaan  stood 
out  fronting  other  lands.  It  was  a  part  of  Asia,  and  yet 
was  separated  from  it  by  a  distinct  geological  formation 


176    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  nis  bible. 

that  is  without  a  parallel  on  the  globe.  In  some  con- 
vulsion of  the  crust  of  the  earth,  there  has  been  formed 
a  depression  running  north  and  south,  so  that  the  great 
Jordan  valley  lies  a  thousand  feet,  in  some  places,  below 
the  Mediterranean  ;  thus  cutting  off  Palestine  from  its 
own  continent  and  thrusting  it  forth  into  the  presence 
of  the  world.  Along  its  eastern  shore  stretched  the 
"great  and  wide  sea,"  the  Mediterranean,  with  its 
Joppa  the  oldest,  and  its  Tyre  the  grandest  sea-port  of 
the  ancient  civilization.  Waves  that  washed  Europe  on 
the  one  side  and  Africa  on  the  other  came  dashing  in 
iipon  the  long  sea-beaches  of  Palestine.  It  was  central 
to  the  commerce  of  the  world.  It  invited  the  ships  of 
every  clime  to  bring  their  treasures  for  exchange  upon 
those  fruitful  shores.  That  grand  old  sea  gives  us  the 
means  of  making  accurate  the  division  between  ancient 
and  modern  histoi-y.  For  if  modern  history  is  the  his- 
tory of  lands  washed  by  the  hoarse  surges  of  the  stormy 
Atlantic,  then  we  may  define  ancient  history  as  the 
history  of  the  lands  washed  by  the  white  surges  of  the 
blue  and  beautiful  Mediterranean.  But  if  Palestine 
stood  fronting  the  sea  and  inviting  its  commerce,  no 
less  was  the  situation  propitious  on  the  landward  view. 
If  ships  brought  commerce  over  the  sun^lit  waves  of  the 
Mediterranean  to  her  western  coasts,  the  caravan,  rich 
in  treasures,  on  its  way  from  Arabia  and  the  lands  of 
the  more  distant  Orient,  must  pass  through  her  eastern 
gatesj   and  over  the  Jovdan  valley  and  up  and  into 


DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT  HISTOKIC   FACTS.  177 

Palestine,  on  its  way  to  the  wealthy  cities  of  Smyrna  and 
Ephesus,  in  Asia  Minor. 

So,  too,  on  the  soutli  lay  Egypt,  the  most  fertile 
land  on  earth  ;  and  north  lay  Assyria  and  Babylonia, 
prodigal  of  gold  and  gems,  boasting  of  mineral  as  Egypt 
of  agricultural  wealth.  In  the  rivalries  of  trade  or  the 
fiercer  rivalries  of  war,  this  land  of  Palestine  was  directly 
on  the  highway  between  the  two.  None  could  pass 
east  of  it,  for  there  was  the  pathless  desert.  They  must 
go  directly  through  for  trade.  They  must  march  their 
armies  directly  across  the  plains  in  time  of  war.  In 
days  of  peace — and  Solomon  saw  that  "  the  empire  was 
peace," — the  heaviest  tolls  might  be  exacted  and  were 
gladly  paid.  Hence  the  immense  revenues  of  Solomon. 
Hence  the  riches  that  built  the  Jerusalem  temple.  In 
time  of  war — and  this  was  nearly  all  the  time — between 
the  vast  northern  power  and  the  vast  southern  kingdom, 
it  was  policy  in  the  Jewish  nation  to  take  part  with 
neither,  but  to  furnish,  at  a  regular  commercial  price, 
supplies  to  both.  So  that  in  a  strict  neutrality  in  war, 
and  in  a  careful  trade  with  the  contestants,  the  advan- 
tages to  them  were  nearly  as  great  as  those  of  peace. 
The  great  cities  were  back  upon  the  spine  of  hills  which 
runs  up  and  down  the  land.  And  the  Egyptian  armies 
seeking  their  Assyrian  foe,  or  the  Assyrian  hosts  seeking 
their  hereditary  enemy  of  Egypt,  always  attemi^ted  to 
pass  at  the  foot  of  these  hills  and  between  them  and  the 
sea.  There  were  two  plains  along  the  sea-shore,  vary- 
8* 


YiS     A  YOUNG  man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

ing  from  one  to  twenty-five  miles  in   width  and  thrice 
that  length  from  north  to  south.     Both  of  them  led 
into  a  vast  valley-plain  of  twenty  by  thirty  miles  running 
directly  across  the  country  from  east  to  west,  the  great 
plain  of  Esdraelon,  the  battle-field  of  the  world.     On 
this  field  armies  of  every  ancient  and  of  nearly  every 
modern  nation  have  met  in  deadly  conflict.     It  has  been 
trod  by  Babylonian  armies  under  Nebuchadnezzar,  by 
Assyrian  armies  under  Sennacherib,  by  Jewish  armies 
under  Gideon  and  Saul,  by  Egyptian  hosts  under  Necho, 
by  Moslem  hordes   under   Saladin,  by   crusaders   from 
Spain  and  Portugal,  from  Germany  and  Italy,  by  Eng- 
lish troops  under  Smith,  and,  less  than  a  hundred  years 
ago,  by  Frenchmen  carrying  the  imperial  eagles  under 
the  personal  leadership  of  Napoleon  I.  of  France.     The 
world's  history  has  been  written  in  blood  on  this  plain 
of  Esdraelon,  in   Palestine.     Those    great    conquerors 
whose  disastrous  fame  has  filled  up  with  sickening  full- 
ness the  records  of   human  history,  have   all   seen  that 
Palestine  was  geographically  the  pivot  of  empire,  and 
that  the  Esdraelon  plain  was  the  great  field  the  winning 
or  the  losing  of  which  carried  with  it  all  they  hoped  or 
all  they  feared.     To  this  plain  they  have  come  either  in 
person   or  by   their   armies.     Here   came  the   Persian 
Cyrus,  the  man  whose  rise  to  power  is  the  most  wonder- 
ful exploit  in  history  ;  that  Nebuchadnezzar  who  when 
he  died  left  behind  him  "  more  buildings  reared  by  his 
hands  than  any  man  who  ever  stood  on  this  planet ; " 


DIFFICULTIES    ABOUT   HISTORIC   FACTS.  179 

that  Macedonian  conqueror  who  wept  for  other  worlds 
to  subdue  ;  that  Roman  Cffisar  who  by  his  vast  hordes 
overrun  Palestine,  giving  imperial  names  to  her  cities 
and  to  her  beautiful  inland  sea  ;  that  Richard  of  Eng- 
land whose  fame  is  world-wide  ;  that  Godfrey,  at  once 
the  pride  of  Europe  and  the  boast  of  his  own  France  ; 
that  great  emperor  Frederick  Barbarossa,  whose  ashes  are 
buried  in  the  ruins  of  the  old  Christian  temple  at  Tyre, 
near  by  this  plain  where  he  fought  so  nobly  ; — these  are 
some  of  the  men  Avho  have  seen  in  Palestine  the  very 
central  spot  of  geographical  position,  the  possession  of 
which  in  their  day  was  essential  to  their  plans  of  empire. 
And  when  any  young  man  hears  a  sneer  thrown  at 
Palestine  as  if  it  were  never  of  any  importance,  as  if  it 
had  always  been  an  out-of-the-way  land,  and  had  no 
right  to  such  an  eminence  in  the  Bible,  let  him  recall 
the  fact  that  it  has  been  coveted  more  than  the  gold 
of  Ophir  and  the  mines  of  Golconda  by  the  great  con- 
querors, statesmen,  rulers  of  the  world.  And  instead  of 
heeding  the  sneer,  let  him  pity  the  man  whose  knowl- 
edge of  the  history  of  the  human  race  leads  him  to 
undervalue  the  importance  of  the  land  which  geographi- 
cally was  the  most  important  land  of  any  on  earth  to 
the  older  nations.  Let  him  recall  also  the  fact  that  when 
the  older  nations  faded  out  and  their  lands  were  occu- 
pied by  newer  peoples,  there  was  still  the  same  ambition 
to  possess  Palestine.  Assyria  and  Egypt,  broken  and 
retired  from  the  stage,  there   arose   west  of  Palestine, 


180     A   TOUJSTG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   AVITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

two  empires,  one  that  of  Greece,  the  other  that  of 
Eome.  Both  coveted  the  east,  the  far  east.  Between 
them  and  that  far  east  stood  Palestine.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  their  project  of  universal  empire  to  gain  a  foot- 
hold in  Palestine  and  make  it  their  base  of  operations. 
They  came,  a  vast  host,  marching  across  Asia  Minor, 
and  whitening  the  Mediterranean  witli  their  vast  fleets 
of  transports.  They  effected  a  landing  in  Palestine. 
But  when  they  attempted  to  advance  inward,  they  were 
met  by  the  hosts  of  the  far  east  who  swarmed  in  upon 
the  plain  of  Esdraelon  from  over  the  Jordan  and  gave 
them  battle.  In  a  hundred  fights  the  Greek  and  the 
Eoman  had  a  sort  of  success.  They  occupied,  partially, 
and  for  a  very  brief  time,  the  country,  holding  it  in 
military  duress.  But  in  the  end  both  were  routed,  and 
retired  discomfited  from  the  land.  They  had  dashed 
against  this  rock  and  their  dreams  of  universal  empire 
were  rudely  broken.  And  then,  too,  when  other  cen- 
turies had  come  and  gone,  and  the  Holy  Land  was  the 
possession  of  the  Moslem  of  the  east,  there  went  fortli  a 
cry  through  the  west  of  lamentation  because  the  cres- 
cent instead  of  the  cross  hold  Jerusalem.  The  cry  of 
lamentation  became  one  of  angry  warfare,  and  the  cru- 
sades were  organized.  It  was  the  whole  west  warring 
against  the  whole  east.  It  was  a  continent  rising  against 
a  continent  for  the  possession  of  a  strip  of  land  not 
larger  than  the  State  of  New  Hampshire,  but  which  had 
been  for  long  centuries  not  only  the  best  known  but 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT  HISTOEIC   FACTS.  181 

also  the  most  coveted  land  on  earth.  The  last  blow 
ever  struck  by  the  crusaders  was  vainly  given  on  a  little 
eminence  of  the  Esdraelon  plain,  a  few  hundred  feet  only 
from  the  sjjot  where  Jesus  uttered  the  "  Sermon  on  the 
Mount."  And  from  that  hour  the  victory  of  the  east 
has  been  secured,  and  the  Moslem  has  held  Palestine  in 
his  merciless  grasp.  And  as  with  religious  wars  so  with 
those  prompted  purely  by  ambition.  Napoleon  in  the 
fullness  of  his  lust  for  jjower  craved  the  mastery  of  the 
east.  He  saw  the  worth  of  Palestine  as  the  only  possible 
base  for  further  conquests.  And  he  must  try  his  hand 
at  the  task  only  to  find  his  dream  of  eastern  empire 
melt  away  on  these  shores  where  others  before  him  had 
met  a  similar  fate. 

And  thus  God's  choice  of  Palestine  as  a  home  for 
his  people,  as  a  place  second  to  none  in  all  the  old  world 
in  its  geographical  importance,  has  been  endorsed  by 
the  world's  statesmen  and  warriors.  It  was  no  secluded 
spot.  It  fronted  the  continents.  It  took  the  eye  of  the 
world.  All  done  there  was  done  for  the  gaze  of  the 
race.  And  God's  wisdom  selected  not  only  the  people 
so  keenly  receptive  of  moral  ideas,  but  the  land  for 
them  to  inhabit,  that  his  purpose  might  be  accomplished 
of  giving  to  the  race  through  them,  as  they  dwelt  in 
this  central  position,  a  revelation  of  his  will. 

The  historic  position  of  the  Hebrew  race  in  their 
home  at  Palestine  is  worthy  of  study  as  showing  another 
feature  of  God's  plan.     There  were  centuries  before 


182    A  YOuisrG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

them.  There  have  been  centuries  after  them.  But  had 
they  appeared  sooner  or  later  in  the  calendar  of  historic 
time,  they  would  have  utterly  failed  in  their  mission. 
Back  of  them  were  the  two  great  historic  peoples  of 
Babylonia  and  Egypt,  but  both  were  waning  when  the 
Hebrews  appeared.  After  them  the  Romans  were  the 
world's  masters.  Parallel  with  them  was  the  Assyrian 
empire  in  the  days  of  its  strength.  A  few  centuries 
earlier  the  documents  of  Moses  would  have  been  im- 
possible. A  few  centuries  later  the  necessary  tuition  of 
the  Hebrews  in  the  arts  of  Egypt,  could  not  have  been 
had.  Their  geographical  position  was  not  more  striking 
as  they  fronted  the  continents  than  was  their  historical 
position  as  they  stood  conspicuous  in  the  world's  thought. 
They  took  from  the  wisdom  of  Egypt  all  that  was  valu- 
able, just  as  Plato  took  his  philosophy  from  the  old  city 
of  On  near  the  banks  of  the  Nile.  But  Plato  and  the 
Greeks  developed  what  they  took  in  one  way,  a'nd  Moses 
and  the  Hebrew  hosts  in  another.  From  Egypt  came 
ideas  of  agriculture  and  the  arts  of  embroidery  and  of 
letters  for  writing  ;  the  knowledge  of  the  astronomy  by 
which  the  Hebrews  fixed  their  numerous  festivals,  and 
the  history  by  which  Egypt  became  the  second  as  Pales- 
tiue  the  first  of  the  Sacred  Lands.  And  they  left  behind 
them  in  Egypt  a  nioral  impression,  which  was,  in  part 
at  least,  a  revival  of  the  more  ancient  Egyptian  faith  in 
the  eternity  of  God  and  tlie  immortality  of  mau.  From 
Pharaoh's  reluctant  lips  they  forced  a  confession  of  par- 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT   HISTORIC   FACTS.  183 

tial  faith  in  Jehovah  as  God.  When  settled  in  Pales- 
tine their  distinct  belief  Avas  known  to  all  the  nations, 
and  obtained  respectful  recognition.  Hiram,  king  of 
Tyre,  a  hundred  miles  from  Jerusalem,  sent  workmen 
to  Solomon  to  assist  in  building  the  Temple  on  Moriah. 
Cyrus  gave  a  decree  which  shows  that  Hebrew  ideas  had 
penetrated  the  Persian  mind,  and  that  the  enslaved 
race  were  masters  in  the  realm  of  ideas  of  their  captors. 
And  so,  in  war  and  in  peace,  in  victory  and  in  captiv- 
ity, now  by  voluntary  and  now  again  by  involuntary  teach- 
ing, the  Hebrew  ideas  were  slowly  but  surely  working 
their  way  among  the  nations,  and  thus  carrying  for- 
ward the  divine  plan.  And  as  God  was  ordering  their 
historic  position,  so  he  was  arranging  the  nations  to 
receive  the  influence  they  were  to  exert.  Parallel  with 
them,  during  an  important  part  of  their  history,  was  the 
Medo-Persian  power  under  which  flourished  those  sects 
nearest  in  religions  belief  to  the  Hebi'cws  of  any  known 
to  history.  One  of  them,  the  world-famed  "Magi," 
sent  its  deputation  to  Palestine  at  the  birth  of  Christ. 
And  when  Jewish  history  culminated  in  the  advent 
of  Jesus,  God  had  ready  the  one  great  empire  of  Eome, 
then  the  mistress  of  the  world.  Thus  it  was  that  the 
unity  of  peoples  in  one  sovereignty  made  them,  willing  or 
unwilling,  God's  messengers  to  spread  speedily  the  story 
of  the  cross  over  the  inhabited  earth. 

And  here,  too,  we  find  the  reason  for  those  peculiar 
incidents  which  appear  in  the  Scriptures.     These  inci- 


184    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

dents  are  intended  to  be  object-lessons.  Mere  words 
wonld  be  forgotten.  But  facts  with  a  moral  meaning 
in  them  would  be  remembered.  We  cannot  imagine 
any  better  way,  or,  indeed,  any  other  way,  in  which  God 
conld  teach  the  primitive  tribes  and  nations.  A  fact, 
a  striking  occurrence,  a  phenomenon  singularly  unlike 
any  other,  which  these  olden  nations  would  at  once 
connect  with  the  finger  of  God,  was  surely  the  most  im- 
pressive, most  natural  form  of  moral  teaching  and  the 
one  most  to  be  expected.  If  Hebrew  history  were  with- 
out its  examples  of  striking  incidents  used  as  divine 
object-lessons,  we  should  have  wondered  at  it.  Their 
absence  would  try  our  faith  more  than  their  pi'esence. 
To  a  people  apt  in  receiving  this  kind  of  teaching,  God 
gave  these  object-lessons  ; — and  the  fact  that  they  were 
accepted  so  readily,  confirms  our  faith  in  the  wisdom 
that  selected  the  method. 

Take  the  story  of  the  first  man's  first  sin.  The  whole 
series  of  circumstances,  seem  to  be  contrived  for  their 
moral  impression.  No  need,  so  far  as  man's  actual  fall 
was  concerned,  of  the  events  which  took  place  in  the 
garden,  of  the  ser]icnt's  agency,  of  the  sword  at  the  gate. 
But  the  occurrences  were  to  be  for  the  world's  teaching. 
The  garden  not  only  does  symbolize,  but  was  intended, 
as  we  know  by  Christ's  use  of  the  word  Paradise,  to 
symbolize  the  state  of  happy  holiness,  the  fullness  of 
which  is  heaven.  And  sin  was  to  be  made  loathsome 
and  foul ;  and  temptation  to  be  seen  as  stealthy  and 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT   HISTORIC    FACTS.  185 

mean,  a  crouching  serpent  with  slimy  tongue  and  in- 
sinuating motion  and  beautiful  form,  to  charm  and  then 
destroy  men.  And  the  historic  fact  of  Satan's  tempta- 
tion through  words  that  seemed  not  his  own  but  the 
serpent's  words,  is  not  only  named  by  our  Lord  long 
centuries  afterward,  but  the  moral  teaching  of  it  is  en- 
forced by  him  when  he  says,  "Ye  are  of  your  father  the 
Devil.  He  was  a  liar  from  the  beginning."  The  whole 
series  of  facts  was  to  be  rehearsed  in  the  earliest 
centuries  by  the  patriarchs  and  thus  handed  down 
through  the  generations,  until  written  language  came  to 
the  rescue  of  an  oral  tradition,  and  Moses  must  put  the 
story  on  the  imperishable  pages  of  Revelation. 

And  the  flood  is  in  the  same  line  of  object-teaching. 
It  taught  the  world  of  the  sin  of  attempting  to  do  with- 
out God.  And  no  less  was  the  dejiverance  given  to 
Noah  a  designed  instance  of  palpable  teaching.  For  it 
has  so  stamped  our  whole  mode  of  thought  that,  in  the 
religious  language  of  the  world,  the  ark  is  the  symbol  of 
salvation.  So,  too,  we  can  understand  the  overthrow  of 
Sodom  only  when  we  see  it  as  God's  teaching  of  retri- 
bution. In  the  pathway  of  the  great  caravans,  on  the 
world's  broadest  highway,  situated  where  its  destruction 
would  be  as  conspicuous  as  its  wickedness  had  been 
notorious,  sure  to  be  the  theme  of  remark  as  an  example 
of  divine  wrath  in  its  singular  overthrow,  in  its  doom 
first  by  fire  and  next  by  burial  in  the  sea  the  mists  of 
Avhich  are  a  perpetual  reminder  of  the  "smoke  of  her 


18G    A  YOUNG  man's  difficulties  with  his  bible. 

torment,"  that  old  city,  living  in  story  though  long 
dead  in  fact,  has  stood  out  on  the  sacred  page  as  a 
solemn  warning,  the  lurid  light  of  which  has  caught  the 
eye  and  alarmed  the  wickedness  of  all  generations  of 
men.  And,  in  after  ages  the  deserved  destruction  of 
the  wicked  Canaanites  who  were  usurpers  in  Palestine, 
who  had  abundant  opportunity  to  repent  and  to  leave 
the  land,  but  who  made  the  approach  of  the  Israelites  a 
pretext  for  a  war  in  direct  defence  of  idolatiy — this  de- 
struction, so  often  condemned,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  same 
light.  It  is  no  isolated  event  to  be  judged  by  ordinary 
rules.  The  nations  that  then  existed  and  that  were  to 
be  born  needed  to  understand  that  denying  God  and 
attempting  to  thwart  his  will  was  sure  to  bring  ruin. 
And  so,  all  through  the  prophets,  we  hear  those  iron 
tongued  men  ring  out  the  threat  that  as  God  destroyed 
the  nations  in  Canaan  so  he  would  destroy  the  Jews,  if 
they  walked  not  in  his  ways.  * 

But  probably,  the  incident  in  the  Bible  which  the 
young  man  will  hear  most  earnestly  denounced  is  that 

'  As  to  Psalms  which  contain  prayers  for  the  destruction  of 
David's  enemies,  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  was  not  a 
private  man  wishing  for  private  vengeance,  but  a  king,  and  as 
such  the  rightful  head  of  authority  and  the  executive  whose 
duty  it  was  to  punish  evil  doers.  And,  above  all,  he  was,  before 
the  surrounding  nations,  the  representative  of  the  Jehovah  wor- 
ship. Hence  the  enmity  of  idolatrous  princes  was  directed  not 
only  against  his  throne,  but  against  his  God  and  his  religion. 
See  the  fifty-eighth  Psalm,  where  we  have  in  the  eleventh  verse 
an  explanation  of  the  malediction  in  the  tenth  verse. 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT   niSTORIC    FACTS.  187 

concerning  the  proposed  sacrifice  of  Isaac  by  Abraham. 
Though  the  act  was  not  done,  and  was  not  intended  to 
be  done,  yet  there  stands  the  command.  The  objector 
urges  that  sucli  a  command,  though  God  intended  at 
the  last  moment  to  stay  the  fatal  knife,  must  have 
been  an  outrage  on  the  moral  sense  of  Abraham  and  of 
the  whole  world  ;  that  it  seems  a  blur  upon  the  moral 
character  of  God  himself  for  him  to  order  the  death  of 
a  child  at  a  father's  hands.  It  is  true  that  the  popular 
answer  vindicates  God  from  blame.  It  is  true  that  we 
are  to  look  at  the  "whole  transaction,  the  command  and 
the  counter-command  ;  and  that  Abraham  afterwards 
saw  the  scojoe  and  compass  of  it  which  cleared  up  every 
difficulty." '  But  is  it  enough  that  we  simply  clear  God 
and  his  servant  Abraham  from  blame  ?  This  would 
leave  the  matter  in  its  negative  aspect.  It  would  per- 
haps excuse,  but  would  it  justify  the  transaction  ?  Nor 
does  it  tell  us  the  deep  reason  for  this  command,  so 
unusual ;  nor  does  it  give  us  any  hint  as  to  why  the  story 
is  so  prominently  recorded  in  God's  Word.  There  must 
have  been  some  great  reason,  lying  back  of  all  this,  for 
allowing  such  a  transaction  as  the  attempted  offering  of 
a  son  in  human  sacrifice  by  the  hand  of  a  father  who 
was  the  most  righteous  of  all  the  men  in  his  day. 

Now  what  if  we  have  here  GocVs  object-lesson  in 
redemption — the  "preaching  of  the  Gospel."  What  if 
the  full  justification  of  the  transaction,  not  only  to  the 

'  "  Moral  Difficulties  of  the  Bible." — Hessey. 


188     A   YOUKG    man's   DIFFICULTIES   AVITH    HIS   BIBLE. 

Patriarch's  moral  sense  but  to  that  of  the  whole  world, 
is  to  be  found  in  that  which  it  was  intended  to  teach 
men  of  God's  love  in  its  method  of  saving  them,  by  the 
sacrifice  of  the  only-begotten  Son.  Put  it  thus  :  There 
had  come  to  Adam,  in  the  garden,  the  i^rimal  promise, 
hard  after  the  primal  sin.  It  was  no  general  declaration 
of  a  redemption,  but  the  special  promise  of  a  Redeemer. 
This  promised  Redeemer  was  the  one  object  of  all  the 
ancient  faith.  The  belief  in  his  coming  was  the  one 
article  in  the  creed  of  the  "youthful  world's  grey 
fathers."  Further  on  in  history,  the  mass  of  the  race 
had  lost  out  the  belief  in  the  promise,  and  so  were 
doing  ''only  evil."  God  sent  Noah,  who,  in  the  very 
form  of  deliverance  granted  his  household,  preached  the 
Gospel  in  a  figure — the  ark  being  not  only  a  type  of 
salvation,  but  of  its  method  by  special  Divine  interfer- 
ence for  those  who  believe  and  obey.  Years  go  by. 
The  faith  in  the  promise  is  again  almost  lost.  There 
is  needed  once  more — this  time  for  all  the  centuries — a 
great  jpalpabU  object-lesson  that  shall  stand  up  and  out 
and  take  the  eye  of  the  world.  But  who  should  give 
this  lesson  if  not  this  man  Abraham,  "  the  father  of  the 
faithful  ?  "  He  was  to  set  the  world  a  lesson  of  human 
faith  in  obeying  a  divine  command.  Why  not  also  a 
lesson  as  to  the  Divine  Fatherhood,  as  it  was  to  show 
itself  in  making  sacrifice  for  human  redemption  ?  Can 
any  other  way  be  imagined  so  awful,  so  tender,  so  im- 
pressive as  that  of  a  father   giving  np  his  only  son  I 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT  HISTORIC   FACTS.  189 

Now,  what  if  God,  the  atoning  idea  ever  present  in  his 
thought  and  ever  craving  expression,  took  this  man 
Abraham  as  it  were  at  his  word.  What  if  he  appoints 
to  him  such  a  lofty  proclamation  of  this  fact  as  was 
allotted  to  no  other  "j)reacher  of  righteousness." 
Abraham  shall,  in.  a  sense,  represent  God.  He  shall 
show  what  God's  love  is  like.  He  shall  help  prepare 
the  world  for  the  Calvary  scene.  Through  this  father's 
devotion  of  his  son  to  death  and  through  his  receiving 
of  Isaac  "  from  the  dead,  from  whence  he  received  liim 
in  a  figure,"  there  was  set  forth,  as  nearly  as  could  be 
done  by  any  human  transaction,  the  great  fact  of  God's 
gift  of  the  Divine  Son  to  die  and  to  rise  from  the  grave 
for  human  redemption.  And  so  this  whole  scene  is  to 
be  judged  not  at  all  by  our  ordinary  rules  of  moral 
judgment  as  to  right  and  wrong.  And, if  we  fail  to  see 
how  as  a  merely  human  transaction  we  can  quite  justify 
it,  we  are  happily  delivered  from  all  dilSculty  when  wo 
see  in  it  a  divinely-ordained  setting  forth  of  the  great 
redemptive  fact.  That  it  has  been  looked  upon  gener- 
ally through  the  Christian  centuries  as  our  greatest  illus- 
tration of  that  fact,  is  no  small  evidence  that  it  was  in- 
fended  so  to  be  regaitled  by  God.  And  thus  it  was  a 
prophetic  scene  ;  a  great  objective  representation  to 
those  who  lived  before  the  Messiah's  day.  Only  tlnis 
can  we  understand  this  transaction,  or  justify  it,  or 
admire  it.  The  Messianic  idea  is  the  key  to  many  an 
event  in  the  Old  Testament.     And  nowhere  do  we  more 


190     A   YOUKG   man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

need  it,  and  nowliere,  when  seen,  is  it  more  instructive 
than  in  this  great  object-lesson  of  redemption  which  is 
here  furnished  to  the  world. 

And  a  young  man's  difficulties  are  removed  and  his 
faith  is  established  by  noticing  what  may  be  called  the 
timing  of  the  miracles  and  "  wonderful  works  "  of  the 
Scriptures.  This  thing  grows  on  one  who  studies  the 
volume.  The  miracles  are  no  longer  a  confused  jumble 
of  strange  events.  Each  takes  its  place  ;  its  oivn  place  ; 
and  it  is  seen  that  it  could  not  have  come  in  at  any  other 
time.  'No  two  of  these  miracles  can  change  places. 
The  flood  does  its  work  at  its  own  ej^och.  Abraham's 
attempted  sacrifice  is  the  event  for  that  hour,  and  for 
no  other.  No  Old  Testament  miracle  could  have  oc- 
curred in  New  Testament  times.  Those  that  appear 
somewhat  alike  are  so  only  in  appearance.  The  New 
Testament  miracles  are  exactly  ordered  as  to  the  point 
where  they  occurred.  They  are  progressive.  The 
''  raising  of  Lazarus,"  could  not  change  places  with  the 
"  turning  of  the  water  into  wine,"  except  by  an  entire 
destruction  not  only  of  the  Gospel  story  but  also  of  the 
harmony  of  Christ's  own  character.  He  could  not,  being 
the  Christ  he  is,  have  inverted  this  order,  if  he  would 
be  understood  by  men.  Embosomed  in  a  family  known 
only  in  the  social  circles  of  a  Galilean  province,  it  was 
exactly  fit  that  his  first  miracle  should  be  the  consecra- 
tion of  domestic  life.  But  the  grand  resurrection 
miracle  was  best  done  near  Jerusalem,  just  when  all 


DIFFICULTIES   ABOUT  HISTORIC   FACTS.  191 

teaching  aud  all  miracle  were  culminating  at  the  close 
of  his  ministry. 

And  this  element  of  time  is  to  be  noticed  in  an 
event  mid- way  between  the  two  just  named — the  trans- 
figuration. It  gi-ew  out  of  a  want  that  did  not  exist 
either  at  the  outset  or  at  the  close  of  Christ's  earthly  life. 
It  was  needed  alike  by  the  state  of  mind  in  which  the 
immediate  disciples  found  themselves,  aud  of  the  scheme 
of  his  own  life  as  shown  by  what  preceded  and  followed 
the  event.  He  had  just  told  them  of  his  coming  death. 
It  surprised  them  more  than  all  his  miracles.  Eight 
long  weary  days  they  pondered  the  strange  fact  so  un- 
likely if  he  were  really  ''the  Christ."  He  told  them 
that  they  might  also  have  to  lay  down  their  own  lives. 
They  think  of  him  as  failing,  of  his  mission  as  ending  in 
defeat  and  of  their  own  utter  loss  as  those  embarked  in 
a  ruined  cause.  Never  was  their  faith  so  low.  In  this 
condition  they  fail  utterly  to  do  the  mighty  Avorks  they 
had  performed  so  easily  a  month  before.  He  takes  a 
part  of  them  up  Tabor  ;  or,  it  may  be,  a  spur  of  Her- 
mon.  They  are  weak  in  faith  in  him  as  "the  one 
sent  of  God."  But  in  the  Tabor  manifestation  they  see 
at  once  tvlio  Christ  is!  The  heavenly  glory  is  about 
him.  They  can  doubt  no  more.  The  conversation  of 
the  denizens  of  the  other  world  is  about  that  death 
which  these  disciples  thought  so  shameful,  but  which 
now  is  so  glorious.  Their  faith  needed  a  palpable  object- 
lesson.     Tabor  gives  it.     They  accept  his  death,  per- 


192     A  YOUNG   man's   difficulties  WITH  HIS  BIBLE. 

haps  also  their  own,  as  an  event  connected  with  the 
eternal  glory.  And  how  much  the  transfiguration 
meant  to  the  world  at  large  as  the  completion  of  its 
idea  of  Christ  !  He  had  shown  his  power  over  nature, 
in  stilling  the  tempest,  in  feeding  the  hungry  thousands  ; 
over  man's  body  by  healing  his  diseases,  by  giving  sight 
to  the  blind  and  tongues  to  the  dumb  ;  over  man's  soul 
by  forgiving  sins  ;  over  the  lower  world  of  evil  spirits 
by  casting  out  demons  from  those  who  had  been  allowed 
to  receive  that  peculiar  visitation.  But  there  remained 
one  other  department  in  which  there  was  need  that  he 
should  show  his  sovereignty.  Had  he  power  over  the 
world  of  holy  souls  ?  Was  heaven  also  allegiant  to  him  ? 
Would  it  acknowledge  him  ?  Would  those  who  do  God's 
will  in  the  highest  places  of  the  universe,  the  most  select 
spirits,  come  at  Ids  bidding  as  demons  had  gone  at  his 
command  ?  See !  The  heavens  open.  Moses  the 
greatest  of  lawgivers,  and  Elias  the  greatest  of  prophets, 
who  for  centuries  had  been  serving  in  heaven,  came  at 
his  ivord !  When  works  are  done  that  show  power  over 
nature  the  world  thinks,  though  incorrectly,  of  physical 
might.  When  works  are  done  that  show  power  over  the 
world  of  evil  souls,  men  can  say  that  Satan  has  them 
in  allegiance.  But  none  save  God  himself  can  com- 
mand the  allegiance  of  the  holy,  and  have  them  obey. 
More  striking  was  the  Bethany  miracle.  More  impres- 
sive to  the  general  sense  of  the  world  was  the  resurrec- 
tion of  our  Lord  himself.     But  no  event  of  all  his  event- 


DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT  HISTORIC   FACTS.  193 

ful  life  SO  exhibits  his  power,  his  majesty,  his  glory,  as 
does  this  obedience  of  the  souls  so  long  disembodied,  so 
long  serving  in  the  interior  service  of  heaven  ;  the  souls 
standing  nearest  the  Great  White  Throne. 

And  it  will  help  a  young  man's  faith  if  he  will  see 
the  setting  of  these  miracles  and  these  wonders  in  their 
moral  teaching.  In  the  miracles  of  Jesus  this  is  very 
evident.  The  feeding  of  the  five  thousand  grew  out  of 
three  things  which  occurred  together  at  that  very  point. 
There  was,  first,  the  multitude  physically  hungry.  Or- 
dinarily they  could  have  gone  to  the  city  and  bought 
bread.  So  too,  they  were  hungry  for  truth.  One  of 
those  movements,  inexplicable  except  by  the  theory  that 
God's  spirit  sometimes  moves  peculiarly  on  men's  souls, 
was  in  progress.  Truth  had  impressed,  but  not  yet  done 
its  whole  work  in  conversion.  Should  the  process  be 
stopped  in  the  soul  for  want  of  a  few  loaves  ?  So,  too, 
there  was  a  lingering  doubt  about  him  in  their  minds. 
He  meets  at  once  the  physical,  the  intellectual  and  the 
moral  want  of  these  men. 

And,  more,  he  is  shoAvn  to  the  world,  when  the  event 
goes  upon  the  Gospel  page,  as  the  master  of  nature, 
able  to  perfect  in  an  instant  its  processes  ;  and  at  the 
same  time,  while  so  great,  he  is  also  shown  as  caring  for 
man's  "daily  bread."  And  yet  the  fitness  of  miracle  to 
teaching,  and  of  them  both  to  the  idea  of  Christ  which 
the  world  was  to  receive  is  not  more  striking  in  this 
than  in  the  case  of  every  miracle  of  the  Bible. 
9 


194     A  YOUNG   man's  DIFFICULTIES  WITH   HIS   BIBLE. 

And  the  miracles,  especially  of  Jesus,  are  not  merely 
accompanied  with  teaching,  but  they  have  a  meaning  in 
themselves.  They  are  not  separate  wonders  but  orderly 
facts  in  the  development  of  Christ's  doctrine.  Hence 
their  prominence.  They  stand  right  out.  They  strike 
the  eye.  They  are  not  only  signs  and  evidences  of 
Christ's  authority,  but  divine  object-lessons,  to  which 
our  Lord  appeals.  He  told  men  that,  if  they  were 
doubtful  about  his  words,  there  were  his  works.  If 
they  did  not  understand  the  one  they  could  the  other. 
He  did  not  look  upon  his  miracles  as  merely  physical 
facts.  They  had  moral  relations.  And  so  too  the 
Apostles  regarded  them.  The  resurrection  of  their 
Master  was  the  great  miracle — so  great  that,  if  true, 
there  could  be  no  objection  to  the  other  and  lesser  mir- 
acles which  they  proclaimed  every  where.  It  is  to  them 
no  pretty  fable,  no  beautiful  myth.  In  their  way  of 
telling  it,  it  was  a  fact  with  a  moral  meaning.  It  carried 
with  itself  the  whole  moral  system  of  Christian  facts  and 
doctrines.  And  when  the  lesson  of  each  miracle  is  seen 
it  is  no  excrescence  to  the  growth  of  the  fair  tree  of  rev- 
elation. Its  teaching  is  the  most  miraculous  thing 
about  any  miracle.  No  miracle  was  simply  a  "sign  "  in 
the  physical  world.  It  was  chiefly  a  "  wonder  "  in  the 
moral  realm.  The  miracles  carried  witli  them  an  elo- 
quence most  convincing.  Their  light  went  out  through 
all  the  earth  and  their  words  to  the  end  of  the  world. 
There  is  no  speech  nor  language  where  their  voice  is 


DIFFICULTIES  ABOUT  HISTORIC   FACTS.  195 

not  heard.  They  are  stars  in  the  moral  heavens  that 
declare  the  glory  of  God  and  show  his  handy-work. 

The  miracles  have  not  only  moral  ends,  but  they  are 
themselves  teachings.  There  is  the  marrow  of  some 
Gospel  doctrine  in  every  miracle  of  Jesus.  A  miracle 
is  a  doctrine  incarnate.  And  the  old-time  miracles,  in 
the  destruction  of  Sodom,  in  the  crossing  of  the  Red 
Sea,  in  the  healing  by  a  look  at  the  lifted  serpent,  in 
the  descending  manna,  in  the  divided  Jordan,  in  the 
thrown-down  walls  of  Jericho, — what  are  these  but 
God's  great  object-teachings,  even  if  no  word  be  uttered 
in  explanation  ? 

And  only  as  one  sees  the  grand  setting  of  these  mir- 
acles, their  place,  time,  order,  purpose,  in  God's  great 
unfolding  of  his  redempU^'e  pliin,  do  these  things  that, 
all  alone,  to  merely  the  philosophic  or  scientific  eye, 
appear  like  blemishes,  become  beauties  ;  these  hindran- 
ces helps  ;  these  difficulties  of  faith  its  best  arguments 
and  supports.  The  key-stone  of  the  arch  standing  alone 
would  be  an  impossibility.  But  then  it  does  not  stand 
alone.  It  is  to  be  seen  in  its  place  with  other  stones. 
And  in  the  temple  of  God's  revealed  will  these  miracles 
are  no  hindrance  to  the  use,  and  no  excrescence  upon 
the  beauty  of  the  structure,  when  one  shall  rightly  come 
to  see  and  to  hear  and  to  worship  with  reverent  heart. 
They  have  their  place.  There  would  be  here  a  weak- 
ened arch  and  there  an  unfilled  niche  without  them. 
Not  one  can  be  spared.     There  is  no  blemish  as  of  a 


196     A   YOUNG    man's   DIFFICULTIES   WITH    HIS   BIELE. 

single  useless  thing.  Nothing  can  be  added,  without 
harm,  nothing  taken  away  without  loss.  Each  thing 
was  in  the  plan  of  the  structure  as  drawn  by  the  archi- 
tect. And  the  architect  and  the  builder  were  one.  So 
that  each  thing  adds  in  its  own  way  to  the  strength  or 
to  the  beauty  of  the  edifice  which  God  has  reared.  It  is 
a  structure  the  foundation  of  which  is  his  truth,  and  its 
top-stone  his  praise. 


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T^^    SCIUJVCJEJ    01"    GOrUllJVMBJV'T, 

In  connection  with  American  Institutions.  293  pages.  $l.SO. 
By  Dr.  Alden.  Intended  as  a  text-book  on  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  for  High  Schools  and  Colleges.  This  book  contains  in  a  compact  form 
the  facts  and  principles  which  every  American  citizen  ought  to  know.  It  may  be 
made  the  basis  of  a  brief  or  of  £.a  extended  course  of  Instruction,  as  circumstances 
may  require. 


PATTERSON'S  COMMON   SCHOOL  SPELLER. 
160  Pag-es.    25  cents. 
By  Calvin  Patterson,  Principal  Grammar  School  No.  13,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 
This  book  is  divided  into  seven  parts,  and  thorougkly  graded, 

PATTERSON'S  SPELLER  AND  ANALYZER. 

176  Pages.    40  cents. 

Designed  for  the  use  of  higher  classes  in  schools  and  academies. 

This  Speller  contains  a  carefully  selected  list  of  over  6,000  words,  which  em- 
brace all  such  as  a  graduate  of  an  advanced  class  should  know  how  to  spell. 
Words  seldom  if  ever  used  have  been  carefully  excluded.  The  book  teaches  as 
much  of  the  derivation  and  formation  of  words  as  can  be  learned  in  the  time  al- 
lotted to  Spelling, 

PATTERSON'S  BLANK  EXERCISE  BOOK. 

For   Written  Spelling.      Small  size.      Bound  in  stiff  paper  covers. 
40  Pagres.    25  cents. 

PATTERSON'S  BLANK  EXERCISE  BOOK. 

For  Written  Spelling.       Large  size.      Bound  in  board  covers. 
72  Pag-es.    50  cents. 

Each  of  these  Exercise  Books  is  ruled ^  numbered,  and  otherwise  arranged Xo 
correspond  ivith  the  Spellers.  Each  book  contains  directions  by  which  written 
exercises  in  Spelling  may  be  reduced  to  a  system. 

There  is  also  an  Appendix,  for  Corrested  Words,  which  is  in  a  convenient  form 
for  rewews. 

Tiv  the  tme.  of  fhege  7i/anK-  Exerri.<te  7}ooA-x  a  class  0/ four  hundred  may, 
in  thirty  minutes,  spell  fifty  words  each,  making  a  total  of  ^0,000  words,  and 
carefully  criticise  and  correct  the  lesson  ;  each  student  thereby  receiving  the 
benefit  of  spelling  the  entire  lesson  and  correcting  mistakes. 


